Another IPCC AR5 reviewer speaks out: no trend in global water vapor

I was an “expert reviewer” for the first and second order drafts of the 2013 Intergovernmental Report on Climate Change (IPCC) Assessment Report 5 (AR5). The names and reviews of all the reviewers will be posted online when the final report is released. Meanwhile, reviewers are required to not publish the draft report. However, the entire second draft report was leaked on December 13, 2012, without IPCC permission and has subsequently received wide publicity.

My review mainly concerns the role of water vapor, a key component of global climate models. A special concern is that a new paper on a major global water vapor study (NVAP-M) needs to be cited in the final draft of AR5.

This study shows no up or down trend in global water vapor, a finding of major significance that differs with studies cited in AR5. Climate modelers assume that water vapor, the principle greenhouse gas, will increase with carbon dioxide, but the NVAP-M study shows this has not occurred. Carbon dioxide has continued to increase, but global water vapor has not. Today (December 14, 2012) I asked a prominent climate scientist if I should release my review early in view of the release of the entire second draft report.

He suggested that I do so, and links to the official IPCC spreadsheet version and a Word version of my review are now posted near the top of my homepage at www.forrestmims.org.

The official IPCC spreadsheet version of my review is here. A Word version is here.

The obvious concern to this reviewer, who has measured total column water vapor for 22.5 years, is the absence of any mention of the 2012 NVAP-M paper. This paper concludes,

“Therefore, at this time, we can neither prove nor disprove a robust trend in the global water vapor data.”

Non-specialist readers must be made aware of this finding and that it is at odds with some earlier papers. Many cited papers in AR5 have yet to be published, but the first NVAP-M paper was published earlier this year (after the FOD reviews) and is definitely worthy of citation: Thomas H. Vonder Haar, Janice L. Bytheway and John M. Forsythe. Weather and climate analyses using improved global water vapor observations. GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 39, L15802, 6 PP., 2012. doi:10.1029/2012GL052094.

We have plenty of professional scientists and researchers on this blog. There are also a huge number of people like me, educated to BSc (Hons) degree level, who struggle with the basic alarmist argument that the earth is heated to a staggering degree by a trace atmospheric gas.

For me, I stick to the basics. There is no way known to thermodynamics that a cooler object (like the atmosphere) can cause net warming to a hotter object (like the surface of the earth), regardless of any lower-order energy exchanges which may be occurring (like CO2 resonance to terrestrial long wave radiation at about 15 microns).

My question is, are there any attorneys, lawyers, or barristers on this blog that can bring this ruinously expensive scam to a prosecution against an individual, or a group of people, a publicly or privately funded body, or a government minister or adviser in a leadership role?

I want them to stop frightening the kids and I want my ‘kin money back.

Most people believe the CO2 alone is the cause of projected warming. They do not understand that even the IPCC does not clearly claim that. They claim that CO2 causes the initial warming which triggers more evaporation, more water vapor (and methane from melting ice). They then say that water vapor could be a positive or negative feedback, but their models mostly use water vapor as a positive feedback. Satellites from Spencer could not find the “hot spot” in the atmosphere from increases in global temperatures. That is, if warming was caused by greenhouse gases, then the extra warming should be from more heat entering than leaving the troposphere. Spencer concluded, based on my understanding, that there was no evidence of an increased greenhouse effect. Essentially, as the earth warmed, it radiated a proportional amount of excess heat out. The warming must be coming from natural sources… i.e. it was not trapped within the atmosphere.

To me, the more disturbing part of this post is the following admission, “Many cited papers in AR5 have yet to be published”. Excuse me? How can any organization even hope to claim scientific validity if they rely on papers that have not been published (meaning they’ve completed the review process, such as it is in Climate Science)?

I’m sorry, that’s very much like using Fleisman/Pons ‘Cold Fusion’ ‘paper’ (which hadn’t been published and subsequently never was because the review process exposed it for the rubbish it turned out to be) to justify a massive national effort to crash build billions of dollars worth of ‘cold fusion power plants’. Wouldn’t we have ended up looking a little bit stupid if we did that?

Bill Marsh: I’m a non-scientist and I have to say that this aspect, not just of the IPCC, but the entire global temperature debacle, that bothers me the most is the sloppy to non-existant ‘supporting’ documentation. It’s been airy hand waving, “Trust me I’m a scientist” all along. Snake oil sales. The closest analogy I’ve seen in my own life was a tent revival.

To me, the more disturbing part of this post is the following admission, “Many cited papers in AR5 have yet to be published”. Excuse me? How can any organization even hope to claim scientific validity if they rely on papers that have not been published (meaning they’ve completed the review process, such as it is in Climate Science)?

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simple many papers have been submitted and ACCEPTED but not published yet. So the papers are sent around to reviwers if you want them. The authors have to write the most up to date summary. If the paper misses the final date, then they have to decide what to do for the final draft.

If a sceptic paper was submitted and accepted youd want them writing about it

“The authors have to write the most up to date summary. If the paper misses the final date, then they have to decide what to do for the final draft.”

Are you saying that the final version of the paper is available to all reviewers who want to see it and that it is available in a timely fashion that would permit the reviewer to take account of the paper in his own work? Your last sentence seems to say that they can do what they damn well please.

To me, the more disturbing part of this post is the following admission, “Many cited papers in AR5 have yet to be published”. Excuse me? How can any organization even hope to claim scientific validity if they rely on papers that have not been published (meaning they’ve completed the review process, such as it is in Climate Science)?

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simple many papers have been submitted and ACCEPTED but not published yet. So the papers are sent around to reviwers if you want them. The authors have to write the most up to date summary. If the paper misses the final date, then they have to decide what to do for the final draft.

If a sceptic paper was submitted and accepted youd want them writing about it

I applaud your choice to bring forth more of the truth we all need to see.

I am hopeful others will follow the brave step taken in the last few days by the 2 of you folks.

I am certain there are many IPCC reviewers and participating scientists that feel that “uncomfortable feeling” that surrounds producing a report that does not always provide the scientific truth of the matters involved.

I would encourage each and every one of you to stand up as these brave people have.

The scientific process is very important in the end to every single one of us on this planet.

“Non-specialist readers must be made aware of this finding and that it is at odds with some earlier papers.”

Isn’t this point about water vapor absolutely basic? If increasing CO2 has no detectable effect on water vapor trends then can it have an effect on anything that drives climate? In other words, isn’t increasing water vapor the most direct and simple forcing that has been claimed for increasing CO2? If none is detectable at this late date, doesn’t that mean that the forcing game is over, done, and finished?

Yes, exactly. That is a point I’ve made quite a few times. CO2’s effect on water vapor is central to the AGW argument. Now it turns out that there is no measurable effect at all from rising CO2.

Willis Eschenbach says that CO2 is only a 3rd order forcing, which is swamped by 1st and 2nd order forcings. I agree with that. CO2 probably had a warming effect, but it took place at much lower concentrations. Adding more CO2 to the atmosphere now causes no measurable warming. The only effect it has currently is entirely beneficial: it results in greater agricultural productivity.

As usual, the warmists have got everything backward. CO2 is completely harmless; it is beneficial to the biosphere, and it causes no measurable global warming at current or projected concentrations. The planet itself is confirming that CO2=AGW is simply a failed conjecture.

If the adiabatic lapse rate is responsible for surface temperatures and also for temperatures at each and every altitude, then we would expect the moisture carrying capacity (absolute humidity at saturation) of the atmosphere to be completely specified by the adiabatic temperature profile, except for the areas of dry descending dessicated air in the high pressure regions. If these areas occupy a constant fraction of the whole then the net absolute humidity will remain at a constant fraction of saturation. These are good reasons to believe that Forest Mims’ observations confirm fundamental truths about the physics of the atmosphere.
Does this mean there is no such thing as the “Greenhouse Effect?” No, it is real and potentially has a small effect on the temperature driving force at the surface which is required to set convection in motion. Convection is the primary means for redistributing heat within the lower atmosphere. It establishes and maintains the adiabatic temperature profile (lapse rate), and simple thermodynamics requires it to have a cooling effect. Of course, radiation remains the only way for heat to finally exit the atmosphere.

Water vapor amplification is an indirect mechanism, which requires warmth. So if there’s no warming (as is the case for the last 15 or so years), because other factors overwhelm the influence of increased CO2, there’s nothing to amplify.

But even if not, MODTRAN calculates the water vapor amplification effect at only about 65% of the warming due directly to CO2 alone. A lot of Climate Movement activists seem to think that the water vapor “positive feedback” is some huge multiple, but it’s not:http://www.burtonsys.com/climate/MODTRAN_etc.html

Moreover, that calculation does not take into account negative feedbacks from increased evaporation: increased water-cycle cooling, and perhaps increased cloudiness, so that 65% is really an upper bound. The real-world amplification of CO2’s warming by H2O is almost certainly less than that.

“TonyM says: December 14, 2012 at 8:32 pm
“I think we should address these issues more soberly…”

Great catch. This has to be the best quote on that report “Climate communication fellow for the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland John Cooke says, if anything, warming is worse than predicted in the last IPCC report.”

Aren’t they wearing out that mantra… it’s as if they were predicting an ice age and it didn’t happen.

The fact that CO2 increases while H2O vapor remains the same refutes utterly and finally the AGW hypothesis. For those unacquainted with how their theory works, you need to understand that the AGW theory depends not so much on CO2 as on H2O vapor. CO2 operates as a sort of kickstart, increasing atmospheric water vapor and it is the increased water vapor which does the real warming, according to the AGW theory. The converse disproves the theory: if CO2 increases, but H2O vapor does not, the theory fails. The immutable laws of radiation physics has been misapplied by those who built a house of cards and called it AGW. Their propaganda and alarms notwithstanding, we have seen nearly sixteen years of increasing CO2 without warming. So much for climate models.

@Theo Goodwin: You wrote: “Isn’t this point about water vapor absolutely basic? If increasing CO2 has no detectable effect on water vapor trends then can it have an effect on anything that drives climate? In other words, isn’t increasing water vapor the most direct and simple forcing that has been claimed for increasing CO2? If none is detectable at this late date, doesn’t that mean that the forcing game is over, done, and finished?”

I think it is important to tell the whole truth. I am not sure one can conclude that increasing CO2 has no detectable affect on water vapor. But, the IPCC should be forthright in saying that their models are based on the hypothesis that water vapor levels are amplified by CO2 and that the increase in water vapor is a net positive feedback for the warming caused by CO2 –and that try as they might, they could not find a detectable correlation between CO2 and Water Vaport… unfortunately. But we have been able to adjust our models to reproduce the past, so they are good models.

Given that AR5 completely reverses the position of the IPCC on drought, hurricanes and floods, are you prepared to retract your article from earlier this year titled “The New Normal”? Are you prepared to admit that your alarmism was not founded on science after all? Will you, as the ethical journalist you claim to be, not only admit your folly, but publicly call out the IPCC and their minions for misleading you until now with claims that were increasingly ludicrous in face of the facts?

Will you apologize Bill? Will you say you are sorry Bill for ridiculing those of us who pointed out that a warming world should have less severe weather, not more? That the laws of physics could not produce any other result?

Faced with facts which falsify his argument, a fool argues anyway.
A man steps up, admits his error, and learns from his mistakes.
A coward slinks away in silence.

The IPCC has ceased playing the fool in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary (on these matters at least).

steven mosher says:
December 14, 2012 at 6:31 pm
“simple many papers have been submitted and ACCEPTED but not published yet. So the papers are sent around to reviwers if you want them. The authors have to write the most up to date summary. If the paper misses the final date, then they have to decide what to do for the final draft.”

Most of these papers are of course made to measure for the conclusions the IPCC wants to promote. And as they are all made to promote the same IPCC report, they can even refer each other in a cyclical way. The Jesus paper comes to mind. It’s a great way to invent claims out of whole cloth and further the advance of CO2AGW pseudoscience to world domination.http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2008/8/11/caspar-and-the-jesus-paper.html

Regarding feedbacks. I recall Roy Spencer’s finding showing that the ranges of radiative flux’s have been mostly somewhat negative to slightly positive. That is, the warmer the earth gets, the more heat radiates out of the troposphere. Water Vapor is known to play many roles, and the latent heat of vaporization or condensation exchanges energy in many different places on our planet… often times it rises high in the sky and releases it’s energy there… where it escapes our planet.

daveburton says: Moreover, that calculation does not take into account negative feedbacks from increased evaporation: increased water-cycle cooling, and perhaps increased cloudiness, so that 65% is really an upper bound. The real-world amplification of CO2′s warming by H2O is almost certainly less than that.

So, we see that it is all theoretical physics, not well understood and somewhat misapplied, with very little foundation in real-world observations. What thin soup the faithful have for sustenance.
Propaganda works wonders. The nazis showed us how it’s done.

daveburton says: Moreover, that calculation does not take into account negative feedbacks from increased evaporation: increased water-cycle cooling, and perhaps increased cloudiness, so that 65% is really an upper bound. The real-world amplification of CO2′s warming by H2O is almost certainly less than that.

The real-world amplification is zip because zip x zip = zip

So we are offered theory incompletely understood, misunderstood, and grossly misapplied and given that, we are to do WHAT? Tax carbon? Build windfarms and exterminate ducks, geese, & wildlife and spend trillions on mitigation, etc.? It is mass psychosis and the global warmers rant and rave because we do not follow them over the edge into the sea.

Cmon Mario, you have to be a bit simple to believe anything that John Cooke says. For a start his profession is being a cartoonist. His collaboration with the delusional Lewandowsky says it all.

As for your support for climate models being just great in looking at the past I make two points:
1) they can’t model the past – period. We say full stop in Oz.
2) had the geo-centric modellers applied the same level of BS tweakage to their models then they too were great models and Copernicus’ heliocentric hypothesis would never have made it. Galileo would have flunked in a CAGW world. So would Einstein and Feynman – unlike the other Mann.

My caution to fellow skeptics is to avoid the same level of BS that pervades the warmist views.

Perusing the list of authors that includes Coordinating Lead Authors, Lead Authors, Contributing Authors and very critically the list of Review Editors, one notices that despite the apparent diversity of names coming from various countries, there is always in each chapter what I would call a “key person” that can make a final decision for the said chapter. When Trenberth is Review Editor for chapter 14 but not an author, who would imagine that anything in this chapter will not be fought tooth and nail if it does not fit his views?
That is in part why the IPCC does not wish to get these drafts out: they do not want the strings to be seen behind their lovely diversity of authors.

TonyM: I should have put in Did you read that I wrote, with regard to “warming is worse than predicted in the last IPCC report.”? I followed by writing “Aren’t they wearing out that mantra… it’s as if they were predicting an ice age and it didn’t happen.”

You are reading me all wrong. I am a sceptic sir. Do a search for Mario Lento on this page or on Google and you will find that I have spent a great deal of time debunking the warmist’s.

I see a cooling as cycle 24’s peak will be half of cycle 23’s max… can’t wait for cycle 25 when I nearing retirement.

I requested the paper “Weather and climate analyses using improved global water vapor observations” and the data showing the water vapour profile by altitude layers from the authors. I wrote,

I am interest to see the water vapour trends 300 – 500 mbar, versus the lower level trends.

On 7/24/2012, I received an email from Janice Bytheway. She explained that she could not provide the paper to me. She also wrote,

As for your interest in the trends at the upper versus lower levels of the atmosphere, we unfortunately don’t have the staff or funding to provide subsets of the data at this time. This feature should be provided in about 6 months after the NASA Langley ASDC has taken stewardship of the data.

This is a strange response because the total water column amount is a sum of the layers, so the data should be readily available.

This is important because line-by-line radiative code shows that a change of water vapour content in an atmospheric layer from the 300 mb to the 400 mb level has 30 times the effect on out-going longwave radiation (OLR) as the same change near the surface. A water vapour increase near the surface would have very little effect on OLR, so very little temperature forcing. Only changes in the upper atmosphere matters.

Forrest Mims III writes,

This study shows no up or down trend in global water vapor

This refers to the total water column. A small reduction in the upper atmosphere can offset a warming effect of a large increase near the surface. A no-trend in global total column water vapour during the late 20th century warming period implies a declining upper atmosphere water vapour trend.

Janice Bythway presented the following chart at the GEWEX/ESA Due GlobVapour workshop March 8, 2011:

The chart shows a large reduction in water vapour at the 300 mbar to 500 mbar pressure level, from 1995 to 1999, especially in the tropics. This reduction would result in a significant negative water vapour feedback in response to CO2 emissions. Here is a graph of water vapour humidity at 40 mbar in the tropics versus CO2 from NOAA radiosonde data. Note the R2 = 0.71.

The Solomon et al 2010 paper shows that

Stratospheric water vapor concentrations decreased by about 10% after the year 2000.

The sensitivity to water vapour changes is greatest near the tropopause, where changes are

at a vertical scale too fine to be captured in many global climate models.

This further confirms that CO2, to a large extent, replaces water vapour as a greenhouse gas in the upper atmosphere.

“Water vapor amplification is an indirect mechanism, which requires warmth. So if there’s no warming (as is the case for the last 15 or so years), because other factors overwhelm the influence of increased CO2, there’s nothing to amplify.”

Just a thought, the reason these people are releasing this report is the because of the shabby treatment of real scientists by the IPCC in the past. Thus they are coming out and throwing a big spanner in the works, this will make the politicisation of the final draft fraught with dangers.

The threat of more releases of climategate emails showing past shenanicans would be a concern, thus this report may actually contain some real science, political spin will be overpowered by fact and reason.

There is no way known to thermodynamics that a cooler object (like the atmosphere) can cause net warming to a hotter object (like the surface of the earth), regardless of any lower-order energy exchanges which may be occurring (like CO2 resonance to terrestrial long wave radiation at about 15 microns).”

Andrew the object doing the warming is the sun. The CO2 theory is that extra CO2 prevents the escape of some heat so there is net warming. Perfectly consistent with Thermodynamics.

But the empirical evidence that there is no water vapour trend up or down is extremely significant as it would mean that the small warming effect of extra CO2 is not amplified by consequent extra watervapour.

steven moshersays:December 14, 2012 at 6:31 pm
“many papers have been submitted and ACCEPTED but not published yet. So the papers are sent around to reviewers if you want them. The authors have to write the most up to date summary.”

Come on, it’s not about fashion, it is about science, is it? In a branch of science which is supposed to be settled. Why the rush, why should they be up-to-date then? Instead of going for provably true propositions?

There is nothing magic about peer review. It is a first filter, supposed to remove glaringly obvious flaws only. And it often fails to do even that, otherwise no paper would be retracted later.

In climate science peer review is an especially weak indication of quality, as there was a tremendous political pressure on it for an extended period with very serious attempts to redefine it or to have maverick editors of scientific journals simply fired.

Remember the hockey stick embarrassment? It was shot down, taken into shreds, falsified thoroughly, but only later, not in formal peer review.

Dr. J Haig expert on: Solar irradiance variability and its influence on climate) from Imperial College (I was student there some time ago), London, UK, was quoted in ‘New Scientist’ regarding solar contribution. Instead of commenting in the ‘NS’ column I sent email:

Dr. Haigh
After reading quotes attributed to you in ‘New Scientist’, I take liberty to suggest that the solar contribution to the climate variability may not be fully accounted for.
Link to the article with more detail …………
I also attach Excel file with the relevant calculations.
Please do not hesitate to ask for any additional clarification if required.
Details were also forwarded to your colleague Dr. Leif Svalgaard from Stanford University, who has shown great interest and devoted considerable time and effort in order to disprove validity of the findings.
With best regards
M. Vukcevic

The complete citation from the Geophysical Research Letters article is:

“The results of Figures 1 and 4 have not been subjected to detailed global or regional trend analyses, which will be a topic for a forthcoming paper. Such analyses must account for the changes in satellite sampling discussed in the auxiliary material. Therefore, at this time, we can neither prove nor disprove a robust trend in the global water vapor data.”

In other words, the cannot say anything about the trend, because they have not even tried to compute it and estimate its uncertainty. Especially estimating the error in the trend will be very difficult as the dataset uses different satellites for different periods of the dataset. This satellite dataset is not made to study trends, its strength is being able to study spatial patterns in humidity. To cite from the paper:

“Changes to input datasets and selected algorithms were made with each phase of processing, incorporating improved data and processing methodologies, but resulting in several time-dependent artifacts that degraded the dataset’s decadal uniformity. These changes, in combination with the dataset’s relatively short period of record, make the heritage NVAP dataset unsuitable for long-term trend analysis [Trenberth et al., 2005].”

“NVAP-M Climate is designed for studies on seasonal to interannual timescales on various spatial scales.”

Another import piece of information missing from this post is that this satellite dataset is only 22 years long. This is too short to get statistically significant trends. Also the temperature trend is probably not significant for such a short period. Furthermore specific humidity follows temperature and not CO2 concentrations.

I wish all scientific articles were open to the public. That would make this type of misinformation more difficult.

Ken Gregory, exactly!
Especially when “nearly 50% the total water in the air is between sea level and about 1.5 km above sea level. Less than 6 % of the water is above 5 km, and less than 1% is in the stratosphere, nominally above 12 km”

Referring spefically to Ken Gregory’s comments above, if I understand him correctly, is that the whole process of OLR is altitude dependent. The measurements we see of atmospheric CO2 concentrations are presumably at low altitude, and as we are all aware, those concentrations have been rising. No one disputes this, not even the most degenerate of deniers. But, and again forgive my ignorance as a mechanical engineer dabbling in something outside my area, but aren’t CO2 molecules heavier than those of water vapor, H2O? My question is this: Are CO2 concentrations dependent upon altitude, and wouldn’t those concentrations be much less affected at higher altitudes, and wouldn’t this therefore affect the amount of OLR?

“Therefore, at this time, we can neither prove nor disprove a robust trend in the global water vapor data.”

Non-specialist readers must be made aware of this finding and that it is at odds with some earlier papers.

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If the paper can’t “disprove a robust trend” how is it “at odds” with others which presumably do show a definite trend?

Perhaps it needs to be read in full. If it is demonstrating that , using the same evidence it is impossible to show a trend and that previous studies are flawed , that is significant.

Negative results can be just as important as positive results, But this is not, on that one sentence, a negative result , it is a total lack of any result. It is difficult to see how a NON result can be at odds with anything.

If I say I don’t know whether there is a god , that is not “at odds” with someone who believes in GOD.

The first thing I did with the AR5 leak was to look up the water vapour data and studies they were using.

I understood right away what this report was going to be about – data selection and the refusal to use any data which contradicts the global warming mime.

I downloaded the water vapour forecasts that are being used in the IPCC AR5 awhile ago. AR5 has water vapour up by 6.0% already and it is forecast to be 24% higher by the year 2100.

If we look at the actual observational data, however, it is FLAT. The ENSO is really the biggest factor in its variability. Water vapour was only 0.4 kg/m2, 0.4 mms/m2 higher than normal (25 mms/m2) in November 2012 and it is now on the way down to Zero again given its response to the ENSO.

Water Vapour, the ENSO and the IPCC AR5 forecast from 1948 to November 2012.

In other words, the[y] cannot say anything about the trend, because they have not even tried to compute it and estimate its uncertainty. Especially estimating the error in the trend will be very difficult as the dataset uses different satellites for different periods of the dataset.

The quote from the paper (“The results of Figures 1 and 4 have not been subjected to detailed global or regional trend analyses, which will be a topic for a forthcoming paper”.) does not say that they have “not even tried to compute it”, but rather that they have not completed a “detailed” analysis. The fact that that it will “be a topic for a forthcoming paper” indicates to me that they have done enough to proceed with a planned paper on the subject. As far as difficulty goes, other areas of study (e.g. sea level) also involve the use of multiple satellites and manage to come up with trends and error bounds so your caveat might be taken with a grain of salt.

Your quote of the Trenberth citation is also misguided. The Trenberth paper was written in 2005 about an earlier version of the data set. Seven years have gone by with further additional data and newer processing methodology. The very next paragraph after your quoted section states:

As part of the NASA Making Earth Science Data Records for Use in Research Environments (MEaSUREs) program, heritage NVAP is being reprocessed for the first time, and temporally extended to cover 1988–2009. The resulting dataset, NVAP-MEaSUREs (NVAP-M), expands the temporal coverage of heritage NVAP and improves the analysis, creating a record of Earth’s water vapor on various timescales.

The whole point of the current paper is to discuss what “improvements” have been made to allow the dataset to be used for other purposes. Figure 4c from the paper shows a global time series for TPW (total precipitable water) extending over the time period spanned by the dataset so the authors seem to think that the data can be used for that purpose.

Another import[ant] piece of information missing from this post is that this satellite dataset is only 22 years long. This is too short to get statistically significant trends. Also the temperature trend is probably not significant for such a short period. Furthermore specific humidity follows temperature and not CO2 concentrations.

How are you using the term “significant” here (“highly meaningful”, “difference from zero unlikely due to random variation”)? If there is neither an increasing or decreasing trend, you don’t get “statistically significant trends” whether the time period is longer or not. You can find upper and lower bounds for the possible size of the trend when the random variation of the data is taken into account and these bounds will become smaller asn the time period covered increases.

Yes, specific humidity should follow the temperature which is supposed to increase as CO2 levels increase but that is another question…

I would imagine right now that the IPCC ring masters are not happy that the audience is seeing their training methods exposed. We can now see that they are torturing the science to perform to their tune…

Ken Gregory says: “This further confirms that CO2, to a large extent, replaces water vapour as a greenhouse gas in the upper atmosphere.”
In other words, Miskolczi got it right.
Now can we take the EPA to court and have their CO2 finding nullified.

The time series chart below shows the AOD measured by the green and red channels of a Radio Shack Sun & Sky Monitoring Station at or near solar noon since 2003. This measurement series was begun when the product was first introduced. The data also includes AOD in the near-IR (816 nm and 940 nm) and full-sky irradiance at all four channels. More data products (column water vapor, PAR and Chappuis-band ozone) will be extracted from the basic measurements when time permits. (See elsewhere on this site for more information about this product, which I designed for Radio Shack. Some 12,000 were sold for $29.99 each.)

That depends on the range of altitudes. Up to about 100 kilometres, the atmosphere is essentially homogenous. It is possible to discern a slight gradient of CO2 concentration in some regions of the world, but in many others, it is fairly flat. This is based on the measurements by airborne instruments (up to abut 20 km) and solar occultation spectra above that. There is no significant fractionation of gases by molecular weight in the convective layer of the atmosphere (that’s why it is called “homosphere”). Further up, in the heterosphere, the fractionation is significant, but it is a very high-energy layer mostly populated by atomic gases at low density.

It is possible that a strong CO2 gradient exists within the first few metres above the surface, where it is produced and consumed, but the data on that are not as massive. Google for “microscale meteorology” to get an idea of what is currently known about atmospheric composition near the surface.

Ken Gregory: “This further confirms that CO2, to a large extent, replaces water vapour as a greenhouse gas in the upper atmosphere.”

Due to increases of CO2 in the upper Troposphere and Stratosphere one should expect increased radiation to space and subsequent cooling. As a result of that cooling more water vapor will condense out of the air and fall to the surface. This should lower the concentration at the higher altitudes.

Seems logical that the water vapor content would not increase as claimed and the models that produce a hot spot must not model the physics properly.

Dear RomanM, the first quote about the inhomogeneity problems of satellite data is indeed about the heritage version as the quote also states. Prof Prof. Tom Vonder Haar and colleagues have worked to reduce the inhomogeneities in their dataset, but they still only claim for the new dataset that it can be used to study variability from year to year or smaller time scales:

“NVAP-M Climate is designed for studies on seasonal to interannual timescales on various spatial scales.”

RomanM: “The fact that that it will “be a topic for a forthcoming paper” indicates to me that they have done enough to proceed with a planned paper on the subject. ”

To me it indicates that the reviewer wanted them to write something about the trends and that they did not want to do so. Then you diplomatically write you will do so later. Even if the dataset were homogeneous, the estimated trend will have a very large uncertainty as the dataset is so short. This likely no one would like to use the dataset for this purpose. The problems with the homogeneity of the dataset furthermore means that it will be a lot of work to do so. I expect they will put their efforts in more productive studies, but as long as I do not have to do it, would welcome such a paper.

Figure 4 shows the total precipitable water (TPW), what normal people call humidity, for the entire period. Yes, you can estimate a trend from this by eye, but that does not mean that this figure is included so that you can estimate the trend. The caption of Figure 4 reads: “Seasonal and interannual variability from NVAP-M Climate: monthly average TPW for (a) January and (b) July 2009. (c) The global monthly average TPW.” They clearly, and repeatedly, mention that you should use this new dataset for season up to interannual time scales. I cannot help it.

I’ve never understood the extra water vapor feedback due to CO2, specifically why only CO2? Water vapor is far more abundant and a GHG that is roughly four times more powerful than CO2 yet somehow it doesn’t cause more of itself being evaporated into the atmosphere. If anything it should be more effective since its IR bands can penetrate, marginally, deeper into water. One would think that any “feedback” would be saturated by water vapor. None of this makes any kind of scientific sense.

This debate brought to mind Willis Eschenbach’s excellent analysis of the diurnal reponse of the tropical Pacific. I don’t have the link, maybe Willis or someone else will post it. It very clearly demonstrates the feedback mechanism between solar induced warming, clouds, rain and temperatures. A must read and should be published and cited by IPCC!

Isn’t water vapor predicted to correlate with temperature and not CO2?
As I understand the AGW predictions, additional CO2 creates a mild increase in the radiative forcing. This increased forcing will have a small net increase in the global temperature.That’s all.
Simultaneously, but independent of CO2 levels, that increased temperature will increase the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere. It is this increase in water vapor that creates the increased feedback.
So, wouldn’t it make more sense to try to correlate water vapor to temperature to try to confirm or disprove that aspect?

If the adiabatic lapse rate is responsible for surface temperatures and also for temperatures at each and every altitude, then we would expect the moisture carrying capacity (absolute humidity at saturation) of the atmosphere to be completely specified by the adiabatic temperature profile, except for the areas of dry descending dessicated air in the high pressure regions.”

What many people seem to miss is that 3/4 of the earth’s surface is covered by water. Any increase in water vapor pressure will be primarily driven by sea surface temperatures, not atmospheric temperatures. The majority of any greenhouse warming will go into seawater. All the blah blah about the atmosphere is mostly irrelevant.

For whatever reason, we’re not seeing the vapor pressure over the oceans increase. There are a number of things that could be limiting this. We don’t know.

Ken Gregory said in part December 14, 2012 at 10:55 pm:
“The Solomon et al 2010 paper shows that Stratospheric water vapor
concentrations decreased by about 10% after the year 2000.” Along with
mentions of upper tropospheric water vapor concentration decreasing.

This asppears to me caused in part by the upper troposphere and
stratosphere being cooled by increase og greenhouse gases other than
water vapor.

Also, I doubt a 10% change in water vapor concentration at the 40 mb
level over the tropics amounts to much anyway. The temperature there
is around -70 C, so water vapor concentration is going to be extremely low.

I asked Dr. Oldenborgh of Climate Explorer to add “precipitable column water vapour” as a variable for the CMIP5 scenario runs. His reply of October 8, 2012:

Thank you for your interest in the data at he Climate Explorer. Unfortunately, I have no more disk space at the moment to add variables. We are trying to get more storage for the Climate Exlorer and I will try to entertain your request when this is available. However, as you know in government these kind of procedures take forever, especially when the money is tight.

I would expect greenhouse-gas-caused warming to cause less of an
increase of water vapor than would be predicted by constant lapse rate
and constant relative humidity.

One reason is that increase of greenhouse gases cools the upper
troposphere and the stratosphere.

Another reason is a result I expect of increase of surface-level water
vapor content and temperature: Updrafts moving more heat. To keep
balance between upward and downward heat flow, I expect a smaller
percentage of the atmosphere to have updrafts, and a larger percentage
to have downdrafts. This will reduce average relative humidity, and make
the atmosphere less cloudy since downdrafts are clear. Although this
would make the cloud albedo feedback positive, I don’t expect it to be as
high as was mentioned in AR4.

“There is no way known to thermodynamics that a cooler object (like the
atmosphere) can cause net warming to a hotter object (like the surface
of the earth), regardless of any lower-order energy exchanges which may
be occurring (like CO2 resonance to terrestrial long wave radiation at
about 15 microns).”

The net flow continues to be from warmer to cooler. What happens is if
the cooler object has an increase in ability to absorb radiation from the
warmer object, and an increase in ability to radiate back to the warmer
object, then the warmer object’s temperature increases in order to maintain
its rate of loss of heat to the cooler object. Dr. Roy Spencer has explained
this several times.

Have you ever seen how cloudy nights on average are warmer than clear
nights? The reason is because the clouds absorb thermal radiation and
emit thermal radiation better than clear air does. This works even though
the clouds are usually cooler than the surface.

If heat transfer is not limited to radiation, it is easy to see how heat flow
from a warm object can be changed by changing the nature of its cooler
surroundings. Consider for example, thermal insulation.
Back to radiation: Clouds are thermal insulation. Radiant heat does not
flow well through clouds, because longwave IR photons can’t go far. They
get absorbed, and reradiated heat gets absorbed again nearby unless
there is a nearby cloud surface for escape. The concentration of longwave
IR photons can’t increase enough to make up for that, due to being limited
by the cloud’s temperature.

Greenhouse gases do the same thing, although usually to a lesser extent,
but also do not reflect away incoming solar radiation the way clouds do.

This morning I opened my paper to find this story from the AP Washington DC, “Growing majority says world is warming.” Relaying the latest AP GfK. It stated 4 out of 5 Americans said climate change will be a serious problem for the US if nothing is done about it. This number is up 73%from 2009. It then claims the biggest change in polling is among people who trust scientists only a little or not at all. This was a phone survey between Nov29-Dec3. It seems the Washington DC PR department is hard at work preparing the uninformed for future climate change legislation or more likely EPA authoritarian regulation. Right now the balance between politics and science is greatly askew. I’m thankful to Anthony for this great site and the many scientists more concerned with the truth than fitting in with the so called consensus. I bet 4 out of 5 dentists if polled would agree with me.

To investigate whether galactic cosmic rays (GCR) may influence cloud cover variations, we analyze cloud cover anomalies from 1900–1987 over the United States. Results of spectral analyses reveal a statistically significant cloud cover signal at the period of 11 years; the coherence between cloud cover and solar variability proxy is 0.7 and statistically significant with 95% confidence. In addition, cloud data derived from the NCAR Climate System Model (CSM) forced with solar irradiance variations show a strong signal at 11 years that is not apparent in cloud data from runs with constant solar input. The cloud cover variations are in phase with the solar cycle and not the GCR

Another component controlled by the sun is shown to affect precipitation here:
COPENHAGEN (AFP) — The earth’s climate has been significantly affected by the planet’s magnetic field, according to a Danish study published Monday that could challenge the notion that human emissions are responsible for global warming.
“Our results show a strong correlation between the strength of the earth’s magnetic field and the amount of precipitation in the tropics,” one of the two Danish geophysicists behind the study, Mads Faurschou Knudsen of the geology department at Aarhus University in western Denmark, told the Videnskab journal.

Dec. 3, 2008 — The sun’s magnetic field may have a significant impact on weather and climatic parameters in Australia and other countries in the northern and southern hemispheres. According to a study in Geographical Research, the droughts are related to the solar magnetic phases and not the greenhouse effect.

We also know that the atmosphere has become much clearer since approx 1990:

In 2005 Wild et al. and Pinker et al. found that the “dimming” trend had reversed since about 1990 [8]. It is likely that at least some of this change, particularly over Europe, is due to decreases in pollution; most governments have done more to reduce aerosols released into the atmosphere that help global dimming instead of reducing CO2 emissions.

The Baseline Surface Radiation Network (BSRN) has been collecting surface measurements. BSRN didn’t get started until the early 1990s and updated the archives. Analysis of recent data reveals the planet’s surface has brightened by about 4 % the past decade. The brightening trend is corroborated by other data, including satellite analyses

Also, I doubt a 10% change in water vapor concentration at the 40 mb
level over the tropics amounts to much anyway. The temperature there
is around -70 C, so water vapor concentration is going to be extremely low.

The effect of a given amount of water vapor on OLR depends very strongly on altitude. The Solomon 2010 paper states,

Stratospheric water vapor concentrations decreased by about 10% after the year 2000. Here we show that this acted to slow the rate of increase in global surface temperature over 2000-2009 by about 25% compared to that which would have occurred due only to carbon
dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

This is a large effect.

Did you fail to grasp the significance of my statement;

This is important because line-by-line radiative code shows that a change of water vapour content in an atmospheric layer from the 300 mb to the 400 mb level has 30 times the effect on out-going longwave radiation (OLR) as the same change near the surface.</blockquote
Figure 2 in the Solomon 2010 paper here:
show the forcing of a 1 ppmv change of water vapour in each 1 km layer. It shows the greatest effect of a water vapour change is at the tropopause at 15 km altitude. This is just where water vapour trends had the largest percentage decline. By comparison, water vapour increase near the surface has little effect on forcing.

“For me, I stick to the basics. There is no way known to thermodynamics that a cooler object (like the atmosphere) can cause net warming to a hotter object (like the surface of the earth), regardless of any lower-order energy exchanges which may be occurring (like CO2 resonance to terrestrial long wave radiation at about 15 microns)…….I want them to stop frightening the kids and I want my ‘kin money back.”

That’s a view that is quite in vogue with many of my electrical engineer colleagues. These guys had a semester of thermodynamics, 90% of which they had forgotten 2 weeks after the final. And, of course, if climate scientists really were that stupid, that they’d propose something in violation of one of the laws of thermodynamics, then that surely would be a pretty outrageous scam indeed.

But say he’s right. The climate scientists are just such morons as this guy believes. What would be a sound remedy to debunk the scam of said morons?

Do a proper study. Apply the laws of thermodynamics. Using math to keep track of the relationships. The relaltionships are, yes, pretty basic thermodynamics, but the first thing you encounter is complexity. Just the sheer numbers complex relationships going on within Earth’s climate.

Fortunately, we have a remedy. Computers. Computers are a God send for wading through tons and tons of math. Yes. We can render the mathematical relationships as expressed in accordance with the laws of thermodynamics within mathematical modelling.

Now we are cookin’ with gas.

Point is: It’s the above commenter who is one hell of a moron in my book.

It didn’t take him much of a trial to find himself innocent of responsibility for taking one hell of a gamble with the grandkids’ life support system. Here’s what he should have done before he legitimately can claim indemnity from reponsibility:

Do the math correctly.

And build a superior climate model. By superior, I mean it does a better job of
PREDICTING climate. Predictions. That’s what separates the grownups from the pups, baby. Predictions.

The day any one of these deniers can do that is the day any one of them has a fentogram of credibility.

After AR4 SAR, TAR, FAR & now #5 its the law of 5s all over, lost track of the IPCC acronyms, which was #1 and #4?
30 years, billions wasted,millions brainwashed and a new psychosis added to the list(fear of self&weather) whats left to hold this pseudo religion together.
Are we about to see another Jonestown? If its a slow motion train wreck, who is going to loot the wreck? I am loving it, its long past time these parasites received a dosage, designed to reduce their numbers to a “sustainable level”.
They will always be with us, but the host sickens noticeably when their number reach todays levels.
Government is the natural home of these idiotic, rent seeking self proclaimed experts.
Follow the money, what do you find? This world wide scam has been funded, promoted and enabled by our governments.
Time to force govt to investigate their own gullibility and culpability in this foolish waste of wealth.
Your opinion of your govt will never be higher than it is today.

@Charles Ashurst fortunately there are some people still in the game who don’t believe that climate astrology is the answer.

perpetually tweaking models to hindcast the past in the hope that they will predict the future ( as they surely do not ) is not the way to spend taxpayers money.

Climate change is an entity that has gone on for millennia. Organisms adapt or die. We are well enough prepared to adapt if we get on the same page and understand that the changes are coming and there is nothing we can do to affect them. Adaptation is what has made this species successful and we did not need beurocracy and fundamentalism to achieve that.

@ Charles Ashurst, Predictions ,,,baby. So what prediction have we wrought from 30 years and billions of tax dollars? Oh the IPCC now only makes projections. Silly me; I project a few guesses about you, that does not mean they have value.
The behaviour of this UN body speak loudly. Have you been listening?
We don’t know what drives the weather, 30 yrs of which we call climate,but we are sure that one of the 16 “drivers” we identify, is the one that does it all.
Now by coincidence this is the only “driver” that can be taxed and regulated. And your friendly UN is here to help with that.
Bernie Madoff is serving a life sentence for operating a far less pernicious fraud.

A free copy of the referenced paper is available here: http://www.leif.org/EOS/2012GL052094-pip.pdf. Upon reading it I found that the authors do not claim that global water vapor has not increased. The lead post is incorrect in its claim that this paper shows water vapor has not increased.

The entire purpose of the review of the second draft is to add material that may have been missed in the original drafting. If Mr. Mims just sends in a comment the authors will consider the new data.

If the biggest complaint about the IPCC second drafts are the ones raised here about solar activity and atmospheric water vapor they have done an outstanding job! Neither complaint stands up to review. The solar forcing report has been contradicted by the author of the chapter and the cited reference does not support the water vapor claim.

I’m sorry but the IPCC and most of the commentators appear to be ignoring the most important element here – the physical properties of water.

Water vapour is the gaseous form of H2O (H2O(g)). It is a colourless and odourless gas. The atmospheric concentration of H2O(g) given the conditions on earth vary between 0% and 4%. The physical properties of H2O(g) prevents it from going to 0% or rising above 4% unless the pressure or temperature of the gas is raised considerably above livable conditions. The concentration of H2O(g) is not dependent upon the concentration of CO2 except in the contribution of CO2’s partial pressure to the overall pressure of the atmosphere. The concentration of H2O(g) is dependent entirely on the atmospheric temperature, if the pressure remains constant, or it is dependent entirely on the atmospheric pressure, if the temperature remains constant. Thus, the concentration of H2O(g) in the atmosphere is more likely to be towards the high end of its range in regions where the temperature and/or the air pressure is higher.

The IPCC’s modellers appear to be using a global average of the H2O(g) concentrations but, unless they are completely ignoring the physical limitations of H2O(g), they should know that the upper limit of 4% still applies globally. They are completely wrong if they assume that H2O(g) concentrations will rise above 4% because that would mean that the global atmospheric conditions would have to have an average temperature well above 300K and/or an atmospheric pressure well above 1 bar. The reason that they do not see any increase in the average global H2O(g) levels is obviously because the average global temperatures have not risen and the atmospheric pressure has remained the same – regardless of any increased CO2 concentration.

And, before anyone goes onto an argument involving clouds – clouds are not H2O(g), they are an aerosol of solid (H2O(s)) and liquid water (H2O(l)) and have completely different physical properties, including their ability to absorb/emit/reflect radiation.

I have a suggestion for WUWT:
Create two main Articles for crowd sourcing Entitled:
Peer-Reviewed Work not in AR5 2nd draft that should be included in Final.
Work Cited in AR5 improperly because it is withdrawn, later revised, or not Peer Reviewed.
Moderate each strongly to point.

As this Mims and Rawls articles point out, we ought not get lost in fine detail. The big errors are the factors left out of analysis and discussion.

Crowdsourcing of what peer-reviewed documents are missing, and an article focused on that subject, would be a fine resource here.

Do the math correctly.
And build a superior climate model. By superior, I mean it does a better job of
PREDICTING climate. Predictions. That’s what separates the grownups from the pups, baby. Predictions.

The day any one of these deniers can do that is the day any one of them has a fentogram of credibility.

Laughable, Charles—on several fronts. First, the “predictions” meme you assert: These “climate scientists” can’t even hindcast, say nothing of forecast. They have demonstrated less than a (and I believe that’s a “femtogram”, not the fentogram you invented) of credibility so far. And I believe they never will, because the earth isn’t dancing to their tune—it has a climate mind of its own, if you catch my drift.

The next is your reliance on “math”. Sure computers are quick, but they’re stupid—they just spit out what you put in.

I’m betting you’ve never run a computer model of anything. I have—not on climate, but on 3-d statistics and economic evaluations in mining; thousands of them. And I tell you what—I can make those models dance to my tune anytime; I can give them assumptions (constraints and algorithms in mathematical form) that will produce practically any answer I want.

It isn’t hard. All I have to do is know what I want the computer to tell me and it will—with petaflops of speed if I throw enough money into the machine.

And what the Warmistas have been telling us their computers are telling them is exactly what they want to tell us directly—but they’re still wrong.

So come back when you have a femtogram of credibility, Charles. Right now the earth’s 5,980 yottagrams of heft is proving the agenda-driven “climate scientists” wrong.

1) No statistically significant increase in temperature for 16 years despite continued co2 rise.

2) No hotspot found after decades 30 years of satellite measurements.

3) No increase in water vapour after “the hottest decade on the record”.

If all 3 are correct observations then how long must this continue for AGW ‘theory’ to be declared FALSIFIED?

I believe you’re right, Jimbo. However, as a geologist I was hoping that the earth’s inevitable plunge into the next Ice Age would be delayed or perhaps even obviated by man’s influence on the climate. Apparently that isn’t going to be the case.

Vuk:
Your link is good. However, the corrected T, as exibited in the graph, I do not agree with. I think the divergence shows that we are missing something critical to the debate as to cause of warming.

I spent a day at Oxford Uiversity to learn more about climate models. They had a nice tool on a spreadscheet: an Energy Balance Model (EBM) with simple math: the four series of forcings (GHGs, human aerosols, volcanic aerosols and solar) inputs were multiplied with a factor which heated up the upper part of the oceans and therefore the earth’s temperature.

With the right factor for 2xCO2 and the same factor for the other input variables, the “model” could reproduce the temperature of the past century quite well:

A nice feature was that one could change the individual factors for each forcing. With some experiments, it was easy to show that the “model” could perform even better in retrofitting the past by halving the effect of 2xCO2 by firmly reducing the effect of human (and volcanic) aerosols, which are highly uncertain (and in my opinion largely overestimated), thereby doubling the relative strength of solar. Here the result:

The main points:
– The same “model” can fit the past temperature trends with wide diverging parmeters for the same forcings, as is the case in all “big” models, especially for cloud cover and human aerosols.
– All “big” models use “one factor fits all” for all types of forcings, which can’t be true: 1 W/m2 change in solar input has its main effects in the stratosphere (jet stream position, cloud and rain patterns) and the deeper ocean surface. 1 W/m2 more CO2 has its main effect in the troposphere and the upper fraction of a mm of the ocean’s surface. Really the same effect on ocean heating?
– The difference in “prediction” of the two EBM runs is a factor 2 until the end of this century. The current “big” models have a range of 1:3…

I have to agree with Camburn. Looking at the data, they most certainly indicate that it may have decreased, at least in the past ten years.

It is apparent that they are using the average global values for the concentration of H2O(g), expressed as mm of TPW (Total Precipitable Water), and at different altitudes as well as latitudes. Looking at the Global Monthly Average TPW Timeseries it is apparent that the average runs, approximately, from a maximum of 28mm to a minimum of 22mm annually. This would give an annual average of 25mm +/- 3mm (12%). The graph appears to flatline over the entire length of the period with an increasing trend during the first ten years and a decreasing trend over the last ten.

Regardless that 20 years is too small a sample size to establish a long term trend, it still generates doubt into the IPCC assertions that increasing CO2 concentrations will increase H2O(g) concentrations, and undermines the accuracy of the models that they are using.

Forrest Mims, thank you so much for coming forward. This information is so important. The evidence is mounting and no one who looks at it can dispute it. Even the MSM would have a hard time looking the other way. Speaking of which… have we any response from that quarter yet? We’ve GOT to keep all of this out in the open where everyone can see it. These are the nuts and bolts of the scam’s destruction.

The tropical sea surface temperature determines the water vapor concentration above the surface. If the atmospheric water vapor has not changed then ocean SST has not changed. Only clouds can change the tropical SST, by changing the net albedo over the ocean.

Around 20000 years ago began a massive warming trend that stopped 8000 years ago. Why did that warming trend stop?? Clouds.

Today, Earth is at its maximum temperature. Clouds prevent any more warming. Most of the current rise in CO2 is recovery from the LIA. CO2 follows temperature.

After reading Charles Ashurst comments I had an inspiration; what WUWT needs is a special page to immortalize comments such as his. It would be tremendously useful as a resource to study the terminal psuedo-scientific green phenomenon. I mean if natural selection doesn’t deal with them, its up to us.

O/T. Anthony, for some reason I am not getting my “likes” to register. Going by only two blogger’s likes showing sofar (that I can see), I’d say I’m not the only one. It happened (for me) on Alec’s post, too. Whatever the reason – know you have more “likes” than is showing. This is all fantastic, by the way. :)

I am only going to make some observations here, as life is too short for a full scholarly dissertation.

There seems to be a very positive correlation between a progressive political philosophy and belief in AGW. I come to this conclusion by following the usual progressive websites, not only HP, but others such as Common Dreams and Mother Jones. If I were to hazard a guess (which I am doing), I would say that 90% of Warmistas are of the progressive persuasion and 99.9% of the progressive persuasion are Warmistas. Let’s consider another area of academia that progressives swear by: Economic models and their predictive powers. Models! Give me enough grant money and I will produce a model to meet your political requirements. James Hansen is nothing more, or less, than the Paul Krugman of environmental ‘science’. But neither Hansen nor Krugman are scientists, and neither climate nor economic models have any predictive capacity.

So what is their agenda? That is a rhetorical question that I will leave for you to answer.

Most of the current rise in CO2 is recovery from the LIA. CO2 follows temperature.

Quite difficult to be sure of that for the recent rise, as any increase of seawater temperature doesn’t give more than 16 ppmv CO2 increase in the atmosphere for 1°C increase, according to Henry’s Law. I don’t think that the “Little” Ice Age was 7°C colder than today…

The NVAP-M web site at http://nvap.stcnet.com/ is worth a look. This site summarizes the NVAP-M project and includes a set of visuals and an animation of monthly averaged global water vapor from 1988 to 2009. Also included is the time series plot of global total column water vapor described in my review of the second draft (SOD) of the IPCC’s AR-5 linked at the top of this page.

My only agenda is that the IPCC must present objective science. It’s charter requires this. Therefore, it is essential that AR5 include the NVAP-M global water vapor time series plot together with an objective discussion of its significance. (If this is included in the SOD, I did not see it.) For discussion purposes, the NVAP-M time series chart shows that the global water vapor trend from 1988 to 1998 was slightly up, the trend was flat from 1999 to 2005, and the trend was slightly down from 2006 to 2010. (Note how this generalized trend roughly follows global temperarature.) In short, as the NVAP authors stated in their paper, presentations and on their web site above, there is as yet no robust trend. Yet there is a substantially robust upward trend in carbon dioxide over the entire NVAP study period.

What matters most is that global water vapor is not increasing with carbon dioxide. Some two decades of measurements of carbon dioxide and total water vapor clearly show that the IPCC claim that warming from rising CO2 concentrations will be significantly enhanced (amplified) by additional warming caused by an increase in the evaporation of surface water (the water vapor positive feedback effect) is not supported by the empirical data.

I have measured total column water vapor in Texas on most days since 04 Feb 1990 and my time series bears resemblances to the NVAP-M global time series, both peaking during 1998-99. The first 12 years of my study were published by GRL (F. M. Mims III, An inexpensive and stable LED Sun photometer for measuring the water vapor column over South Texas from 1990 to 2001, Geophysical Research Letters 29, 20-1 to 20-4, 2002), and I hope to publish a new paper on 22 years of data. My water vapor instruments include LED sun photometers, Microtops II and IR thermometers, all of which I either built, developed, received as in-kind royalties or bought with my own funds. These instruments are not nearly as accurate as GPS column water vapor monitors, one of which is now near my site. Details about this work are at http://www.forrestmims.org

Ferdinand’s comment regarding Henrys law is certainly correct. I did not intend to say that all the post LIA CO2 increase is ocean. Of the 100 ppm increase since the LIA, 4/5th is natural. The remaining 1/5 is anthropogenic.
Of the natural portion, some is ocean via Henrys law. Some is unknown. Some is biological feedback. A warmer Earth has more biological activity and therefore higher Atmospheric CO2.
The carbon cycle people know this. Biology regulates most of the air/surface CO2 flux. The entire atmosphere is mostly of biological origin.
Simple accounting shows that fossil fuels can’t possibly expand the carbon cycle by more than about 4 percent. Since the atmosphere is a mobile part of the biological CO2 flux, then about 4 percent of the atmospheric CO2 is anthropogenic. .04 of 390 is about 16ppm.

If you look at the history of the AGW story, the most impressive flaw is the claim that ALL of the industrial era (post LIA) CO2 increase is anthropogenic. Recent reports on the isotope issue certainly confirm what is obvious to biologists.

Mario Lento says:
December 14, 2012 at 5:48 pm
They then say that water vapor could be a positive or negative feedback, but their models mostly use water vapor as a positive feedback.
++++++++++
Don’t ALL the IPCC model ASSUME water vapor as a positive feedback? I’ve not heard of any models reported by the IPCC that assume water vapor is a negative feedback.

Michael Tremblay says:
December 15, 2012 at 11:01 am
The concentration of H2O(g) is not dependent upon the concentration of CO2 except in the contribution of CO2′s partial pressure to the overall pressure of the atmosphere.
=========
An increase in CO2 will raise its partial pressure. This will reduce the water vapor in the atmosphere as a result, because it will reduce the partial pressure of water vapor.

Charles Ashurst says:
December 15, 2012 at 9:54 am
Predictions. That’s what separates the grownups from the pups, baby. Predictions.
=======
Lots of folks make predictions. They mean nothing unless they are correct. Even then the predictions could be accidentally correct.

For example, if I tell 3 people in turn that temperatures/stock market/whatever will go up, go down, stay the same, then for one of those people my prediction will come true. Elaborate frauds have been conducted in just this manner.

Some basic physics is missing here. Evaporation requires heat (latent heat of evaporation is 2,270 kJ/kg) and CO2 acts as an insulator providing no heat but merely slowing down the rate of cooling; so increased CO2 cannot cause an increase in evaporation to provide the feedback mechanism claimed by the IPCC. Apparently someone missed a key class in highschool physics

@ferd berple says:
December 15, 2012 at 3:45 pm
“Mario Lento says:
December 14, 2012 at 5:48 pm
They then say that water vapor could be a positive or negative feedback, but their models mostly use water vapor as a positive feedback.”
++++++++++
I stand corrected. I did a cursory search and I was incorrect, giving the IPCC more credence than they deserve. They say clouds and water vapor only have a positive feedback. I learn more when I am wrong! Boy they are anti-science more than I thought! The convention in science was that it was unknown what the net feedback water vapor plays in weather. Satellite data certain showed through observation that the feedback ranged from slightly positive to moderately negative… suggesting that most of the satellite observed feedbacks were negative. Thank you fed berple. Another major nail in IPCC’s coffin.

The concentration of H2O(g) is dependent entirely on the atmospheric temperature, if the pressure remains constant …

Michael, if this were true, a graph of specific humidity versus temperature at a given pressure level in the atmosphere would give a straight line with high correlation.

Here is a graph of specific humidity versus temperature at the 400 mbar level in the tropics, 30 N
n to 30 S for the period 1960 to 2011 from the NOAA dataset.

The graph is a phase space plot of the data points connected in time sequence. Over short time periods, an increase in temperature causes an increase in specific humidity. The annual data shows linear striations increasing from bottom left to top right, confirming that higher temperatures relate to higher specific humidity over short time intervals. But the overall trend is down, proving that specific humidity is responding to factors other than temperature. The graph shows that water vapour declines with temperature at a R2 correlation of only 0.014.

Compare this to a graph of specific humidity versus CO2 at the 400 mbar level in the tropics;

This graph shows water vapour declines with increasing CO2 with a remarkably high correlation R2 = 0.71.

In the long-term, factors other than temperature determine upper atmosphere humidity. We believe that the long-term specific humidity in the upper atmosphere is determined by the maximum entropy principle. The atmosphere is able to maximize the loss of heat to space subject to the constraint of the saturation limit in the lower atmosphere by decreasing the water vapour content in the upper atmosphere in response to increasing CO2 concentrations. The decline is specific humidity is not due to declining temperatures because the temperature at this pressure level increased at 0.17 C/decade. The climate models project specific humidity increasing with temperature at this pressure level, contrary to observations. This is discussed in my essay athttp://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/FOS%20Essay/Climate_Change_Science.html#Water_vapour

Professor Steve Sherwood, the director of the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of NSW, was the lead author of the chapter in question.

He says the idea that the chapter he authored confirms a greater role for solar and other cosmic rays in global warming is “ridiculous”.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Actually they have no idea what is going on.

…. The satellite-based studies can be divided into two categories: (1) monthly to decadal timescale analysis and (2) daily timescale epoch-superpositional (composite) analysis. The latter analyses frequently focus on sudden high-magnitude reductions in the cosmic ray flux known as Forbush decrease events. At present, two long-term independent global satellite cloud datasets are available (ISCCP and MODIS). Although the differences between them are considerable, neither shows evidence of a solar-cloud link at either long or short timescales. Furthermore, reports of observed correlations between solar activity and cloud over the 1983–1995 period are attributed to the chance agreement between solar changes and artificially induced cloud trends….. Evidence from ground-based studies suggests that some weak but statistically significant cosmic ray-cloud relationships may exist at regional scales, involving mechanisms related to the global electric circuit. However, a poor understanding of these mechanisms and their effects on cloud makes the net impacts of such links uncertain. Regardless of this, it is clear that there is no robust evidence of a widespread link between the cosmic ray flux and clouds.

… we argue that it is not possible to accurately determine low cloud variations from satellite-based irradiance techniques. ….

In other words so far the real world satellite measurement techniques suck, so there is no evidence for or against except for the Cloud and SKY experiments and some ground based local experiments. Based on this they toss ALL the evidence.

“Water vapor amplification is an indirect mechanism, which requires warmth. So if there’s no warming (as is the case for the last 15 or so years), because other factors overwhelm the influence of increased CO2, there’s nothing to amplify.”

Fully agree. I don’t see here any disproof of feedback mechanism.
________________________________________
It is not just for fifteen yearsGraph

… and now they have changed it and put everything into other data portals that are impossible to navigate (I did have to register through a secure website without a safe certificate but I gave it a shot anyway – obviously there is some type of tracking built in). I’ve tried these other newer sites as well with no success. I’ll try to email if I find it again.

…It is possible that a strong CO2 gradient exists within the first few metres above the surface, where it is produced and consumed, but the data on that are not as massive.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Actually if the CO2 is well mixed at the surface all the Beck data on historical chemical measurement of CO2 would have to be considered and that would blow CAGW completely out of the water.

Who is Richard Windsor? says:
December 15, 2012 at 8:21 am
….For whatever reason, we’re not seeing the vapor pressure over the oceans increase. There are a number of things that could be limiting this. We don’t know.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Well at least for the SST of the North Atlantic it has overall COOLED

Cooling by ∼0.5°C takes place between about AD 1250 and AD 1500; while this corresponds to the inception of the Little Ice Age (LIA), the end of the LIA is not reflected in our record and SST remains relatively low. This transition to cooler SSTs parallels the previously reconstructed shift in the North Atlantic Oscillation toward a low pre-20th century mean state and possibly reflects common solar forcing.

Reply to Bill Illis December 15, 2012 at 5:19 pm
I asked, “Please provide a link to the AR5 model precipitable water vapour forecast digital data.”
Bill, thanks for your reply and for trying to find a link to this AR5 data. If you or anyone else can locate it please let me know. Click on my name to see my email address.

This morning I opened my paper to find this story from the AP Washington DC, “Growing majority says world is warming.” Relaying the latest AP GfK. It stated 4 out of 5 Americans said climate change will be a serious problem for the US if nothing is done about it. This number is up 73%from 2009….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Their numbers seem a wee bit off but what else is new.

I had a quick look a Forrest’s review. It’s very thorough and of high quality.

What’s missing I think is some evaluation of this new paper relative to previous papers to justify why he gives so much weight to this new paper. Otherwise it gives the impression that he prefers this new paper simply because he prefers it’s conclusions.

I think there are some problems with his theory, and I don’t think that “optical depth” is long-run constant, but it does appear that CO2 replaces water vapour to a large extent in the upper atmosphere, so climate sensitivity may be less that the no-feedback case.

Ken Gregory says largely, December 15 2012 9:37 am:
>Replying to: Donald L. Klipstein December 15, 2012 at 8:32 am
>>Also, I doubt a 10% change in water vapor concentration at the 40 mb
>>level over the tropics amounts to much anyway. The temperature there
>>is around -70 C, so water vapor concentration is going to be extremely low.

>The effect of a given amount of water vapor on OLR depends very strongly
>on altitude.

There also the effect of back radiation towards the surface, which is greater
from below the 400 mb level.

>> The Solomon 2010 paper states, Stratospheric water vapor
>> concentrations decreased by about 10% after the year 2000.
>> Here we show that this acted to slow the rate of increase in global
>>surface temperature over 2000-2009 by about 25% compared to
>>that which would have occurred due only to carbon dioxide and other
>>greenhouse gases. This is a large effect.

I consider this a natural part of the water vapor feedback being less positive
than IPCC considers it to be. I expect increase of greenhouse gases to make
the atmosphere above the 400 mb level cooler and the troposphere as a
whole to experience a decrease in relative humidity.

>>Did you fail to grasp the significance of my statement;
>>This is important because line-by-line radiative code shows that a change
>>of water vapour content in an atmospheric layer from the 300 mb to the
>>400 mb level has 30 times the effect on out-going longwave radiation
>>(OLR) as the same change near the surface. Figure 2 in the Solomon
>>2010 paper here:
>>http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/FOS%20Essay/SolomonFig2.jpg
>>show the forcing of a 1 ppmv change of water vapour in each 1 km layer.

At the 300-400 mb level range (~7 to 9 km range), temperature is
averaging roughly -35 to -40 C. And with average water PPMV something
like around 4-4.5% of that at the surface. That would make a percentage
change there there just a little more important than near the surface.

>>It shows the greatest effect of a water vapour change is at the tropopause
>> at 15 km altitude. This is just where water vapour trends had the largest
>>percentage decline.

Where water vapor PPMV average is something like 1% of that at the
surface.

Camburn says:
December 15, 2012 at 11:53 am
…
T = Natural variability + (if any) AGW
I would think it is totally unsafe, wherever it comes from, to propose the extent of the AGW until the natural variability (which most likely have number of independent components) is known to a reasonable degree of confidence.
My findings point only to one possible factor.

Some basic physics is missing here. Evaporation requires heat (latent heat of evaporation is 2,270 kJ/kg) and CO2 acts as an insulator providing no heat but merely slowing down the rate of cooling; so increased CO2 cannot cause an increase in evaporation to provide the feedback mechanism claimed by the IPCC. Apparently someone missed a key class in highschool physics

But “slowing down the rate of cooling” will result in warming. That’s basic thermodynamics.

Isn’t this point about water vapor absolutely basic? If increasing CO2 has no detectable effect on water vapor trends then can it have an effect on anything that drives climate? In other words, isn’t increasing water vapor the most direct and simple forcing that has been claimed for increasing CO2? If none is detectable at this late date, doesn’t that mean that the forcing game is over, done, and finished?

You’ve missed the next bogeyman waiting in the wings: methane release from methane hydrates in permafrost and on the sea floor. See here .

Even if they have to let the water vapor feedback go, there will always be another available “tipping point”.

“But ‘slowing down the rate of cooling’ will result in warming. That’s basic thermodynamics.”

Wrong. Slowing down the rate of cooling will not add heat to the system, and thus will not result in warming. That’s basic thermodynamics. CO2 does not produce heat. That is why, despite steadily rising CO2 over the past sixteen years, there has been no global warming.

Your position is untenable. The CO2=AGW conjecture fails. Honest scientists would acknowledge that increasingly obvious fact. You either want to be honest, or you want to promote the alarmist agenda. The choice is entirely up to you.

But the rest of us understand what Planet Earth is telling us: that CO2 is a very minor, 3rd order forcing agent, which can be completely disregarded for all practical purposes. It’s effect is minuscule, and 99% of the effect has already occurred in the first 200 ppmv. Any further rises in CO2 will have no measurable effect whatever.

….In addition, cloud data derived from the NCAR Climate System Model (CSM) forced with solar irradiance variations show a strong signal at 11 years that is not apparent in cloud data from runs with constant solar input. The cloud cover variations are in phase with the solar cycle and not the GCR

Extreme Ultraviolet Variability Experiment (EVE) investigation will measure the solar spectral irradiance at Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) wavelengths from 1 to 1050 Å (0.1 to 105 nm) plus the important hydrogen emission line at 1215 Å. The EUV irradiance is absorbed by the atmosphere at altitudes above 100 km. This means changes in the EUV irradiance affect the thermosphere, ionosphere, and near-Earth space.

The NASA: SORCE’s Solar Spectral Surprise
In recent years, SIM has collected data that suggest the sun’s brightness may vary in entirely unexpected ways. If the SIM’s spectral irradiance measurements are validated and proven accurate over time, then certain parts of Earth’s atmosphere may receive surprisingly large doses of solar radiation even during lulls in solar activity.

“We have never had a reason until now to believe that parts of the spectrum may vary out of phase with the solar cycle, but now we have started to model that possibility because of the SIM results,” said Robert Cahalan, the project scientist for SORCE and the head of the climate and radiation branch at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md….

Cahalan’s modeling, for example, suggests that the sun may underlie variations in stratospheric temperature more strongly than currently thought. Measurements have shown that stratospheric temperatures vary by about 1 °C (1.8 °F) over the course of a solar cycle, and Cahalan has demonstrated that inputting SIM’s measurements of spectral irradiance into a climate model produces variations of that same magnitude.

Some of the variations that SIM has measured in the last few years do not mesh with what most scientists expected. Climatologists have generally thought that the various part of the spectrum would vary in lockstep with changes in total solar irradiance.

However, SIM suggests that ultraviolet irradiance fell far more than expected between 2004 and 2007 — by ten times as much as the total irradiance did — while irradiance in certain visible and infrared wavelengths surprisingly increased, even as solar activity wound down overall.

The steep decrease in the ultraviolet, coupled with the increase in the visible and infrared, does even out to about the same total irradiance change as measured by the TIM during that period, according to the SIM measurements.

The stratosphere absorbs most of the shorter wavelengths of ultraviolet light, but some of the longest ultraviolet rays (UV-A), as well as much of the visible and infrared portions of the spectrum, directly heat Earth’s lower atmosphere and can have a significant impact on the climate.….

Between 2004 and 2007, the Solar Irradiance Monitor (blue line) measured a decrease in ultraviolet radiation (less than 400 nanometers) that was a factor of four to six larger than expected (black line). In the visible part of the spectrum (400 to 700 nanometers), SIM showed a slight increase in comparison to what was expected. Measurements (red) from another ultraviolet radiation-sensing instrument called SOLSTICE compare well with those from SIM. Note: different scales are used for values at wavelengths less and more than 242 nanometers (see left and right axes respectively). Credit: Joanna Haigh/Imperial College London

A 50-year low in solar wind pressure: Measurements by the Ulysses spacecraft reveal a 20% drop in solar wind pressure since the mid-1990s—the lowest point since such measurements began in the 1960s. The solar wind helps keep galactic cosmic rays out of the inner solar system. With the solar wind flagging, more cosmic rays are permitted to enter, resulting in increased health hazards for astronauts. Weaker solar wind also means fewer geomagnetic storms and auroras on Earth.

A 12-year low in solar “irradiance”: Careful measurements by several NASA spacecraft show that the sun’s brightness has dropped by 0.02% at visible wavelengths and 6% at extreme UV wavelengths since the solar minimum of 1996. The changes so far are not enough to reverse the course of global warming, but there are some other significant side-effects: Earth’s upper atmosphere is heated less by the sun and it is therefore less “puffed up.”….

A 55-year low in solar radio emissions: After World War II, astronomers began keeping records of the sun’s brightness at radio wavelengths. Records of 10.7 cm flux extend back all the way to the early 1950s. Radio telescopes are now recording the dimmest “radio sun” since 1955: plot. Some researchers believe that the lessening of radio emissions is an indication of weakness in the sun’s global magnetic field. No one is certain, however, because the source of these long-monitored radio emissions is not fully understood…..

There is an even more simple explanation to all this and that is surface tension. You can by radiation heat water from above but you cannot physically “heat” water from above because of surface tension. Apply the heat from a paint stripping gun operating at 450degC to the surface of water. No steam will appear and the surface fends off the heat with ease. The surface of water does not obey the second law of thermodynamics due to the existence of surface tension. Try it for yourselves. Surface tension kills the agw scam stone dead.

“The results of Figs. 1 and 4 have not been subjected to detailed global or regional
trend analyses, which will be a topic for a forthcoming paper. Such analyses must
account for the changes in satellite sampling discussed in the supplement. Therefore, at this time, we can neither prove nor disprove a robust trend in the global water vapor data.”

To me, this suggests that the paper did not set out to answer the question of whether or not there is a trend in the global water vapour data. This is entirely different from the suggestion that the paper contradicts the findings from other published papers, which do suggest that such a trend exists.

I have written this before – I am sorry to repeat myself but I am making an important point:

When I Google IPPC news i get a lot of newspaper reports about these latest developments which are very important new. Most turn out to be re-writes of press releases put out by the IPCC rubbishing sceptics arguments. And it stops there.

Our side (I am really not part of you, I am just an interested outsider) is misrepresented in the newspapers because the hacks do no do anything more than copy and paste from press releases. They think they are covering our side of the debate, when in fact all they are doing is covering the IPCC’s version of our version of the debate.

With stories of this importance there should be an official press release made by sceptics for hacks to cut an paste into their newspapers. It should be easy to do, and it should come from a respected source. (Watts Up With That is a respected source),

This very simple to do service would transform the debate, because at present you are having very polite and erudite debates amongst yourselves whilst the world outside learns about your views and conclusions through the press offices of your enemies

Some basic physics is missing here. Evaporation requires heat (latent heat of evaporation is 2,270 kJ/kg) and CO2 acts as an insulator providing no heat but merely slowing down the rate of cooling; so increased CO2 cannot cause an increase in evaporation to provide the feedback mechanism claimed by the IPCC. Apparently someone missed a key class in highschool physics

****

Eh, no. Evaporation still occurs at night (usually reduced). If the water surface doesn’t cool off as much at night from increased CO2 (or cloudcover, etc), will it evaporate more than a water surface without increased CO2 (or cloudcover)? Of course it will — quantitatively. One can argue that the effect is very small (mixing and thermal conduction w/the immediately lower water molecules), but not that it is zero.

There is an even simpler explanation to this than all of the above. You cannot “heat” water from above due to surface tension. I know this because I tried. I fired a paint stripping heat gun which operates at 450degC at the surface of water and the water fended the heat off with ease. Science has reasonably assumed that the surface of water is just that a surface and that it obeys the second law of thermodynamics but they forgot surface tension and they did not check, they just assumed. Because of surface tension the only energy which enters the ocean is the sun’s radiation and nothing else, physical heat cannot penetrate the surface tension, hence no increased moisture due to increasing co2. Because of surface tension the AGW scam is dead. Have a nice day.

If you want to see how important increasing water vapor is to the predicted warming, check out the AR5 water vapor forecasts out to the year 2100.

This can also be seen in this presentation published by the American Meteorological Society authored by Brian Soden (one of the recognized experts on this). This is the about the only document I’ve seen that shows the climate model water vapor forecasts out to 2100

At the NASA site you link they have a frequently asked question here that clearly states that their data has not been analyzed for long term trends. The expected change in water vapor to date is small. Eyeballing raw data, as you are doing, is not sufficient to determine such small differences. NASA says they are in the process of analyzing this new data set. When they get their results they will publish a paper. Until then eyeballing the data is not a reliable way of determining small changes in water vapor.

Your claim that this paper shows the IPCC is incorrectly leaving this data out is contradicted by your links to NASA. This data has not yet been analyzed to determine long term trends.

“If a sceptic paper was submitted and accepted you’d want them writing about it”

In your dreams Steven!

Dirk H wrote:“The Jesus paper comes to mind.”:
In AR4 the originally published WGI deadline for papers to in press was set at 16 December 2005. The deadline for final preprints to be held by the TSU was set at 28 February 2006. Wahl and Amman 2007 missed both. No final preprint, that I know of, was available to any one before September 2007 long after the IPCC released AR4 WGI. See Climatgate 11897722851.txt
In it Jones wrote:

“Good to see these two out. Wahl/Ammann doesn’t appear to be in CC’s online first, but comes up if you search.
You likely know that McIntyre will check this one to make sure it hasn’t changed since the IPCC close-off date July 2006!”

WA2007 had changed a lot and its methodology was not published until August 2008. The 2006 July close-off date was decided by Jones, Overpeck, Solomon and Manning a month after the end of the SOD government and expert review stage. They sent a memorandum inviting all Expert Reviewers to make suggestions. See page 26 of Briffa and Osborn’s evidence.

Any reviewer could suggest papers in press by 24 July 2006 to add balance to the SOD. Stephen McIntyre suggested NRC 2006 and Wegman et al. 2006. On 28 July 2006 Overpeck told Briffa that they had received McIntyre’s response but they were going to ignore it. See Climategate2 1758.txt.
Needless to say WA2007 remained cited in AR4 having missed every deadline, Wegman is not mentioned, and NRC 2006 is not cited for its comments on Bristlecones or the verification statistics of the hockey stick.

On 20 June 2008 the UEA committed an offence by saying it did not hold any responses to the July 2006 close-off instruction memorandum. UEA did it again on 26 January 2010 and yet again on 8 March 2011.

Stocker decided he was not going to put up with this sort of nonsense so if you look at his AR5 timetable you will see that papers only needed to be submitted to be cited in AR5 WGI and only have to be accepted by 15 March 2013 to remain cited.

And to try to keep the lid on AR5 Stocker slipped into the InterAcademy Council recommendations that drafts and comments should be considered confidential until after AR5 is published. Check out the documents on the IPCC website. Not a single country asked for or wanted Stockers confidentiality clause, but it was slipped into the final text by Stocker and friends and nodded through without a vote.

@michael sweet says:
December 16, 2012 at 9:16 am
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The NVAP link you posted is from 2010, which is 2 years before the NVAP-M paper I cited. It specifically states: “At this time, we cannot prove or disprove a robust trend due to atmospheric changes with NVAP, as we stated in our 2005 paper “Water Vapor Trends and Variability from the Global NVAP Dataset” at the 16th AMS Symposium on Global Change and Climate Variations.” Neither can a robust trend be cited in 2012. The NVAP team has been often asked about the trend, if any, in global water vapor. From the 2005 symposium to the recent 2012 paper, the NVAP team has been unable to find a “robust trend” in global water vapor. This contradicts IPCC assertions that increasing CO2 will be accompanied by rising H2O vapor and must be included in the IPCC’s AR5.

I figured out Steve Mosher’s M.O.: It does not matter the value of the science, it matter first, what camp you are in and what you hope to accomplish, then and only then, should you want your message listened to.

Steve: Is there any doubt in your mind that the IPCC is a pure and evenly fair institution looking for the best solutions through science?

“Steve: Is there any doubt in your mind that the IPCC is a pure and evenly fair institution looking for the best solutions through science?”

1. An institution cannot be pure and fair, people maybe. Institutions dont have human characteristics
2. I do not think the IPCC has instituted the best practices for compiling a summary of the science and have said so many times.

Of the natural portion, some is ocean via Henrys law. Some is unknown. Some is biological feedback. A warmer Earth has more biological activity and therefore higher Atmospheric CO2.

That is certainly not the case: a warmer world means more vegetation (both in area and growth) and thus more CO2 sequestration. That is visible over at least the past 800 kyears: a change of about 8 ppmv/°C, while the oceans should give 16 ppmv/°C if they were the only or main driver. Thus the difference is by more uptake from vegetation. That was confirmed by oxygen and 13C/12C ratio measurements in the atmosphere: at least since 1990, the biosphere is a net sink for CO2. See:http://www.bowdoin.edu/~mbattle/papers_posters_and_talks/BenderGBC2005.pdf

Simple accounting shows that fossil fuels can’t possibly expand the carbon cycle by more than about 4 percent. Since the atmosphere is a mobile part of the biological CO2 flux, then about 4 percent of the atmospheric CO2 is anthropogenic. .04 of 390 is about 16ppm.

You forget that the biological cycle is a cycle: what comes out largely goes back in again at the end of the (mainly seasonal) cycle. The same for the oceans. If both are in equilibrium, there is no gain or loss and even an additional 1% one-way supply by humans would be the only cause of an increase.

From the inventory of fossil fuel use we know that humans emit about 9 GtC as CO2 per year. The measured increase is some 3-6 GtC per year. Thus nature as a whole is a net sink for CO2. Thus 100% of the increase is human made, even if only a few % of the original human induced CO2 molecules still reside in the atmosphere. The rest is exchanged with CO2 from other reservoirs.

Recent reports on the isotope issue certainly confirm what is obvious to biologists.

What do you think of this graph, comparing seawater (measured in coralline sponges with a resolution of 2-4 years) and atmospheric d13C over the past 600 years:
The pre-industrial variation in d13C wasn’t more than +/- 0.2 per mil…

Actually if the CO2 is well mixed at the surface all the Beck data on historical chemical measurement of CO2 would have to be considered and that would blow CAGW completely out of the water.

Come on Gail, we were there many times in the past: CO2 is not well mixed at the surface over land near huge sources and sinks (5% of the atmosphere). That is near plants in general or cars, forests, agriculture, factories, towns. That is where many of the Beck data had their origin. Where was measured over the oceans or coastal with wind from the oceans or over 200 meter high over land or in deserts, no problem at all: a maximum variation of 2% of the scale in 95% of the atmosphere. As well in the past data (which were around the ice core averages) as today. I call that well mixed.

“If a sceptic paper was submitted and accepted you’d want them writing about it”

In your dreams Steven!

###########################

David I think you quite miss the point. The rules allow for the authors to write about work that has been submitted but not published. This is a draft. Of course they need to include work that hasnt been published yet. The deadline for publication is in 2013. If there was a sceptic paper , say for example Nic Lewis’ paper that has been submitted but not published yet, you all would want the authors to discuss it. In fact they do. See chapter 10, page 10.
In short, they are discussing a skeptical paper ( lewis 2012) that has been submitted to Journal of the climate but not published yet. It is a excellent paper ( Nic shared it with me some time ago for comments ) It makes sense to discuss this paper in the SOD because in likelihood it will be published before the publishing deadline cutoff.

Now, I expect people here will NOT be demanding that the authors should ignore Nic Lewis’ skeptical paper. That paper met the guidelines for submission ( Nic shared it with me a few days before that deadline ) That paper has not yet been published, but the publishing deadline isnt until much later.

If you think that Nic Lewis’s sceptical paper should NOT be discussed in the draft, then please
go to climate audit where we discussing some of the issues and bang on the drum and demand that the IPCC should not discuss his paper because it hasnt been published yet.

Just to say, Steven Mosher takes some of the flack undeservedly. As some of you know, I am as skeptic about the AGW as anyone, but despite that I communicate privately with Steven, and he has been very helpful with some of my work, which in the essence if correct would undermine the CO2 hypothesis.

” … simple many papers have been submitted and ACCEPTED but not published yet. So the papers are sent around to reviwers if you want them. The authors have to write the most up to date summary. If the paper misses the final date, then they have to decide what to do for the final draft. … ”

In days long gone by; it was said that a paper that was published had to pass the publication’s editor as a first step and then peer review as a second step. Then, after publication, the scientific community could over time evaluate the paper and respond accordingly. So if some erroneous paper did pass review and get published, it could be shot down by other scientists after it was published.

It looks like the UN organization wants to use papers not yet vetted by the full scientific community. I wonder why.

Steven,
No, I think it is you that is missing the point. AR5 allows papers to be cited that are only “submitted” rather than peer-reviewed, accepted and genuinely “in press” with methodology and data available to reviewers . In AR4, not only was WA2007 not published but nor was really accepted, with its methodology available to Expert Reviewers. It referenced another paper that was not even submitted. The published paper was significantly different to what was available to reviewers – despite what Briffa claimed.

For the Expert Review to have any validity all the cited papers should be peer-reviewed with genuinely final preprints, data and methodology archived when the draft is reviewed. Of course it will be well out of date when published but you can’t have it both ways. AR5 can not be said to have been peer-reviewed. Moreover if the reviewers do not get to see the authors responses and the final text and an opportunity to appeal the text the whole exercise is a sham.

Mark Stoval:
It looks like the UN organization wants to use papers not yet vetted by the full scientific community. I wonder why.

You shouldn’t wonder. It is a well-recognized ploy that alarmist scientists use: they write a paper that gets rush-reviewed by pals and stuffed into the IPCC maw just before deadline and before it can be refuted by another paper. This is just one of the many notorious aspects of the IPCC which repells decent scientists. The whole thing stinks and should be abolished. It is the perversion of science.

This to be added to my previous post. Remember Joelle Gerghis and Gerghis et al? Their paper was the product of just such a tactic. It got shot down on Climate Audit and was withdrawn shortly afterward.Except for Climate Audit, it would have been incorporated into AR5 by their fellow “guerilla warriors” (as per Joelle Gerghis). Thus the authors of the IPCC pronunciamento.

It doesn’t matter what the papers say or what data was used/data selected/artificial or what the publishing date of the paper is.

The IPCC is going to cite and use more extensively those papers that support the global warming theory. They are going to cite/use papers which are contradictory to the theory in a very, very minimalist way.

It is the nature of the beast.

To understand what is being presented in IPCC reports, one has to go into depth about individual papers, and do your own research to see which papers are faking/selecting their results to prove whichever side of the argument they are promoting. Climate science is the least objective science there has ever been – in the history of science I mean.

The IPCC citing/using the papers which are the least objective in the history of science only means you need to do your own objective research and not rely on to any extent what is in these IPCC reports without personally having vetted it yourself.

Why is it like this? They believe. They have hitched their personal reputations to it. All 20,000 of them. They are willing to distort/select data if it means that the theory will survive for just one more day. They have kept it alive for 10 years past its best before date already. What they are doing has worked so far. If you are a sceptic, then you have to see that this is the case.

Bill Illis 4:56.
And the ipcc team will draw the farce out as long as they possibly can absorbing wealth and acting as the cover for this recycling of eugenics.
Too many people on planet= kill the poor.
And unless we destroy this beast it will be back in different guises for years.
Time for crimes against humanity trials, with UN staff as the defendants.
First trick of a scoundrel, wrap yourself in all thats good and true.

Given what I’ve seen so far in analysis of the draft AR5 by those far more expert than I, it seems unlikely we’ll see an AR6. Would be fun to be a fly on the wall at the next review of the current swag of reviewer comments, to be held in Hobart in January next, I believe. In the distance, I think I hear the faint sound of the retreat being played, notwithstanding there are platoons of front-line soldiers still firing blanks from their crusty muskets. I’m sure I saw Captain John Cooke exhorting his troops to stand firm, and Sergeant Steven Sherwood was demonstrating how to spin the arrow of his argument.

My guess six months ago was that by 2017, most AGW proponents would be backing away, and becoming the New Denialists (“no, no, I never said it was certain; I always argued that we should await more evidence” . . . ), and by 2020 there’ll be a number of key IPCC players writing their version of this sorry part of our scientific, political, and journalistic history, trying to salvage their reputations.

I applaud those who’ve recognised and spoken out early against the ignorance of many of the AGW arguments. Haven’t they copped such flack! I appreciate also those reviewers such as Alex Rawls for his release of the draft AR5, and for his and Forrest M. Mimms III for their analysis in their own fields. More reviewers will speak out, I’m sure, and the tide will steadily turn further.

But the battle is not over yet, and John Robertson (Dec 16, 2012 at 8.26pm) is quite correct. The beast must be destroyed. The current generation of decision-makers need to understand that they have been duped, and how they have been duped. The story needs to be told also to the next generation, for as John points out, this manic ignorance can return all too easily under a different guise.

Victor Venema says:
December 17, 2012 at 12:01 am
“If the IPCC would not take the latest papers into account, you would complain that the report is outdated. Whatever they do, here it will always be criticized.”

Is that a bad thing to be skeptical of a political organisation which wants to reduce our population in the most cruel way hurting the poorest people? Seriously Victor, could you make a cogent statement here?

In your blog you wrote “Almost any climatological measurement will not have a statistically significant trend over such a short period, but the story is even weirder.” However, the IPCC uses such short time correlations to conclude that CO2 was the cause of 95% of the warming. Then with this, they recommend to policy makers to destroy productivity of civilization.

You dropped by this site with some nonsense, I believe. So please, have some backbone and tell us what’s wrong. Again, make some cogent statement and school us, rather than complain.

@Victor Venema:
You also wrote: “In other words, they cannot say anything about the trend, because they have not even tried to compute it and estimate its uncertainty.”

Are you admitting that IPCC haven’t even tried to compute anything about Water Vapor? Why wouldn’t they? Water Vapor is the linchpin of their entire hypothesis of the catastrophic global warming caused by CO2 and water vapor. Why would they not try to find out if their hypothesis is true? You have a lot of explaining to do… or you have to admit you are a kludge. Sorry if I sound angry, but as a truth seeker, people like you are in the way of any kind or progress in science.

Dear Mario Lento, it is great being skeptical, would love to see more of that. It is less great to be unreasonable.

Mario Lento says:

“However, the IPCC uses such short time correlations to conclude that CO2 was the cause of 95% of the warming.”

The IPCC does not do any research, it just reviews the existing research. Could you refer to the original publication that used only correlation and did so on such a short time series to arrive at such a strong conclusion?

The problem of the NASA humidity dataset is not only that it is short, but also that it is inhomogeneous, the number and the type of the satellites that were used to produce this dataset changed during this 23 year period. It is strange that Mims thinks this is an important paper to compare to the other humidity trend estimates, while the authors themselves only recommend to use it to study seasonal to interannual (year to year) variability. One wonders if Mims read the article he is advocating.

Mario Lento says:

“@Victor Venema: You also wrote: “In other words, they cannot say anything about the trend, because they have not even tried to compute it and estimate its uncertainty.”
Are you admitting that IPCC haven’t even tried to compute anything about Water Vapor? Why wouldn’t they?”

No, the word “they” in your quote refers to the authors of the short 23-year NASA dataset discussed by Mims in this guest post. Again, the IPCC does not do any research, it just reviews the existing research. Of course there is research on the trend in water vapor. This is performed using data from surface stations, ship observations and radiosondes (measurements of the vertical profile on weather balloons). These datasets have a length of many decades, up to more than a century and are thus much better suited to study trends. The strength of the NASA dataset is the spatial overview.

Your post at December 17, 2012 at 12:01 am asserts without any evidence

If the IPCC would not take the latest papers into account, you would complain that the report is outdated. Whatever they do, here it will always be criticized.

NO! That is falsehood!
The IPCC is rightly admonished for presenting a one-sided (i.e. biased) selection of papers as a method to provide a veneer of apparent science in justification of its political purpose. Indeed, many of the papers used in the AR4 were ‘grey’ literature which were NOT peer reviewed but were merely press releases from advocacy groups (i.e. WWF, Greenpeace, etc.).

The NIPCC Report was prepared as a method to ‘fill the holes’ in the selection of papers reported by the IPCC. The NIPCC reported peer-reviewed scientific papers alone (n.b. NIPCC did not use ‘grey literature’).

The IPCC is NOT criticised “whatever they do”. The complaint at the IPCC is undeniably true, and it is that the IPCC is selective, biased and political in its choice of papers to report. The complaint is NOT that IPCC information is “outdated”.

Simply, your post which I am answering consisted of only two sentences which present three falsehoods in what seems to be an attempt to deflect from discussion of the subject of this thread.

Again, the IPCC does not do any research, it just reviews the existing research

It is true that “the IPCC does not do any research” but you misrepresent what the IPCC does do.

The IPCC reviews publications as a method to find papers which it can refer to in reports which support its agenda.

The IPCC is a political organisation and NOT a scientific one. It is an interGOVERNMENTal panel – not a scientific panel – and it uses a veneer of selected science as attempted justification for its objectives.

Dear Richard Courtney, all I can say is that in the field were I am knowledgeable, the homogenisation of surface climate data, the IPCC review seems to be a fair and balanced summary of the state-of-the-art. The review might be a bit too optimistic about the accuracy of the homogenised data, but I still have to do the research to proof that.

Dear Richard Courtney, all I can say is that in the field were I am knowledgeable, the homogenisation of surface climate data, the IPCC review seems to be a fair and balanced summary of the state-of-the-art. The review might be a bit too optimistic about the accuracy of the homogenised data, but I still have to do the research to proof that.

And don’t use the ‘not published in a peer-reviewed journal’ excuse: I have linked to the Parliamentary Submission which complains at how publication of the paper (draft as Appendix B) was prevented from publication by nefarious method.

I’ve been studying how much the temps go up and down on a daily basis for over a year. Over the last 60 or so years the average daily temp swing is ~18/18F (up/down).
On clear day/night cycles in low humidity locations this can be as large as about 60/60F (~250 such days out of ~114 Million daily temp readings), most of these days are from the 70’s on, but there are more than about 10x the number of samples taken after ~1973 so this might not be significant.
But the real point is that atm water vapor on most days in most locations controls nightly cooling, not co2, and the average cooling hasn’t changed more than a degree or so (with no trend) over the last 60 years.

Dear MiCro, yes, the day to day variability in humidity and its influence on the size of the daily cycle (diurnal temperature range; DTR) is large. It is hard to compare this to the change in CO2 as this varies much less from day to day, but does show a long term trend together with humidity. The influence of CO2 on the DTR is only seen in the long run. There are a number of papers, I have mentioned 2 classics below, that do find that the DTR has decreased.

Easterling and colleagues found a decreasing trend in the DTR of about 0.8°C per century. An early study by Karl and colleagues a bit more. What dataset did you use? Any idea what you did differently to arrive at another and hopefully more accurate estimate?

What are the attributed standards for the measurable impact of Water Vapor? Doesn’t answering that question require included calculations for cloud feedbacks? How can IPCC AR5 do anything other than affirm the indeterminateness of future climate in their report? Where are the comparative analyses for atmospheric water vapor continent and soil moisture levels that are coupled with temperature feedbacks produced by the evaporative process. I honestly do not know how much effort is put into smoothing tropospheric and stratospheric heights in efforts to suppress differentiations created by evaporative and absorption feedbacks. Nonetheless, I am troubled by the panels effort to keep CO2 increases coupled with attendant increases in water vapor when their natural processes for production and absorption dispose me to believe that the weight of CO2 will only permit its concentration to rise when the amount of atmospheric water vapor decreases. (even when the measured change is smaller than 1 part per million)

Dear MiCro, unfortunately it takes a bit more effort to compute a reliable climate signal.

First of all, your hourly data is partially from synoptic reports. These are meteorological reports for weather prediction, as this data is communicated fast across the globe for all weather services to use for weather predictions, it is not validated (well) and will contain many outliers due to measurement and communication errors. Based on the dataset you used (I think), the UK MetOffice has generated a quality controlled dataset HadISDin which these outliers are removed. Another problem with this dataset is that is had many stations in the US and little stations elsewhere.
Still better would be to use the measured minimum and maximum temperature from climate stations, you can find them, e.g., in the GHCN data of NOAA or the new dataset of the International Surface Temperature Initiative.

Then there are jumps in the dataset due to changes in the instrumentation. In the beginning of your dataset in 1929, the temperature was probably recorded by a pencil that was attached to a bimetal strip on a slowly rolling bin with paper and later digitized; this device was probably placed in a Cotton Region Shelter. Nowadays automatic weather stations are used, which are often mechanically ventilated. You will have to remove such jumps, which is called homogenization. Or if you do not want to do that yourself, you could use the homogenized dataset of the GHCN.

Then between 1929 and now the number of stations has changed enormously, as you also show. If there is only a small tendency for stations to be more to the North or to the South, closer to the coast or higher or lower up the mountains, this will influence your “average climate signal”. Thus you should either use only stations that measured all the time, or you should normalise them by subtracting the average over a fixed period of a few decades (the way CRU does), or you should compute the difference from year to year and average those (the way NOAA does).

To compute a global average climate signal, you cannot directly average over all data. There are many more stations in the industrialised countries. If you compute a normal average you would only see the climate signal in those countries. The best way to solve this problem is by interpolating over the entire land surface, e.g. by kriging, but even simple linear interpolation may be sufficient. Alternatively you can compute the average signal of all stations within grid boxes (for example 1×1 degree or 5×5 degree latitude and longitude) and then average over these grid boxes.

I am curious what you will find after making such improvements to your method.

The fact that water vapor has not increased in step with increasing carbon dioxide is extremely important for the validity of the greenhouse warning theory. All IPCC calculations of warming require positive water vapor feedback. That is because absorption of outgoing long wave radiation by carbon dioxide will only give you a 1.1 degree Celsius temperature increase That is not enough to scare anybody. But the warming acts as a seed and allows more water vapor to evaporate. Water vapor is also a greenhouse gas and its warming is added to the original greenhouse warming to give us those three, four or five degree warmings coming from the IPCC. But if there is no increase of water vapor with CO2 then there can be no positive water vapor feedback and all those forecasts of dangerous warming ahead are simply wrong. At this point, let me introduce the greenhouse theory of Ferenc Miskolczi. According to him, water vapor feedback is negative, not positive, and it will actually retard any warming from CO2 instead of boosting it. If you consider that there has not been any warming for the last 16 years while carbon dioxide increased you realize that greenhouse warming is really not working, and very likely because of that negative water vapor feedback. Miskolczi was laughed out when he introduced his theory but you really can’t laugh if the predictions from his theory come true. The only question is why now, why has this not happened before? The answer is that people really do not understand the temperature record as presented to us. I have studied the temperature record from satellites that started in 1979. I discovered that the global mean temperature from 1979 to 1997, an 18 year stretch, was constant. It is true that El Nino peaks and La Nina valleys of the ENSO system were present but their average evened out. There was no warming until the giant super El Nino of 1998 appeared. It brought much warm water across the ocean. This raised global temperature by a third of a degree in four years and then stopped. And there has not been any warming at all since then. That step warming of a third of a degree is the only warming within the last 32 years which leaves no time whatsoever for any greenhouse warming at all. This is all covered up in standard temperature curves which show a steady warming in the eighties and nineties when global mean temperature stood still. That warming is falsified. It appeared in GISTEMP, NCDC, HadCRUT3 and NOAA temperature curves. Interestingly, for whatever reason, this August both GISTEMP and NCDC decided to start showing the true temperature for this period while the others did not. There is much there that still needs to be straightened out, including covert computer processing that has left its traces on these temperature curves. In the meantime, the greenhouse theory as promulgated by IPCC must be considered non-functional.

Dear MiCro, unfortunately it takes a bit more effort to compute a reliable climate signal.

First of all, your hourly data is partially from synoptic reports. These are meteorological reports for weather prediction, as this data is communicated fast across the globe for all weather services to use for weather predictions, it is not validated (well) and will contain many outliers due to measurement and communication errors. Based on the dataset you used (I think), the UK MetOffice has generated a quality controlled dataset HadISDin which these outliers are removed. Another problem with this dataset is that is had many stations in the US and little stations elsewhere.
Still better would be to use the measured minimum and maximum temperature from climate stations, you can find them, e.g., in the GHCN data of NOAA or the new dataset of the International Surface Temperature Initiative.”

I remove the outliers prior to using the data, this is on top of the clean up the NCDC already does.

“Then there are jumps in the dataset due to changes in the instrumentation. In the beginning of your dataset in 1929, the temperature was probably recorded by a pencil that was attached to a bimetal strip on a slowly rolling bin with paper and later digitized; this device was probably placed in a Cotton Region Shelter. Nowadays automatic weather stations are used, which are often mechanically ventilated. You will have to remove such jumps, which is called homogenization. Or if you do not want to do that yourself, you could use the homogenized dataset of the GHCN.”

If you noticed I started at 1950 to eliminate years with the fewest measurements. But, this is the raw data that warmists all use, prior to their adjustments.

“Then between 1929 and now the number of stations has changed enormously, as you also show. If there is only a small tendency for stations to be more to the North or to the South, closer to the coast or higher or lower up the mountains, this will influence your “average climate signal”. Thus you should either use only stations that measured all the time, or you should normalise them by subtracting the average over a fixed period of a few decades (the way CRU does), or you should compute the difference from year to year and average those (the way NOAA does).”

I’ve done this (which I mention in the text of the second link), and it makes no difference in the results. Also since the real goal was to get a difference signal (daily rise – fall), so the real work is with data that was taken on the same equipment at the same location with-in 24 hours of each other.

“To compute a global average climate signal, you cannot directly average over all data. There are many more stations in the industrialised countries. If you compute a normal average you would only see the climate signal in those countries. The best way to solve this problem is by interpolating over the entire land surface, e.g. by kriging, but even simple linear interpolation may be sufficient. Alternatively you can compute the average signal of all stations within grid boxes (for example 1×1 degree or 5×5 degree latitude and longitude) and then average over these grid boxes.”

The problem with interpolation is temps are not linear over area. For instance if you look at the google maps I generated (second link), there are no stations in the middle of the arctic, they are all on the coasts. I explicitly did not want to extrapolate temps, as I think it leads to errors. I can see 3-4 degrees difference between stations 40 miles apart.

Mr Mims,
My link was to the FRQ page of the NASA page you linked to. If it is out of date you should not have linked to it in the first place.

The paper you originally linked to, published in 2012, also states clearly that they have not yet analyzed the data to determine any trend. Your claim that since they have not analyzed the data yet means the trend does not exist is simply false. Not analyzed means not yet determined.

If this is our biggest complaint in a 1,000 page document the IPCC must have done a bang up job! Imagine how good the final document will be!

@Victor Venema:
You wrote “The IPCC does not do any research, it just reviews the existing research. ”
Do you sincerely believe IPCC does not do research? When they come up with charts like the ( Figure 2. Summary of the principal components of the radiative forcing of climate change.) on this link [ http://co2now.org/Know-the-Changing-Climate/Climate-System/ipcc-faq-human-natural-causes-climate-change.html ] by not doing research? They then without doing research claim CO2 (as the main human influence) is the main driver of climate change? .

Do you in fact believe this? Seriously, I want to know if you think this is credible and be known as saying as much.

For discussion purposes, the NVAP-M time series chart shows that the global water vapor trend from 1988 to 1998 was slightly up, the trend was flat from 1999 to 2005, and the trend was slightly down from 2006 to 2010. (Note how this generalized trend roughly follows global temperarature.)

Your last parenthetical statement provides evidence that the water vapor feedback is acting as expected. You do understand, do you not, that the water vapor feedback predicts that the warming due to any cause, including CO2, will lead to an increase in water vapor. Hence, over short periods when the temperature trend is not robustly up because of the various other factors that affect temperatures on shorter time scales, the water vapor trend won’t be robustly up either.

@Victor Venema: You wrote “Could you refer to the original publication that used only correlation and did so on such a short time series to arrive at such a strong conclusion?”

In answer to your question, of course the IPCC will not say, they used only correlation.

From 1970 through 2001 is a pretty short period of time, since there was cooling prior to around 1970.

From IPCC AR3 (2001) “[most] of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.”[2] The IPCC defines “very likely” as indicating a probability of greater than 90%, based on expert judgement.”

Here’s a long term trend for you since longer term trends are more valuable. They use whatever correlates well with what they already expected or “know” and then use only supporting “research” to produce models (not research) to verify and prove the outcomes that they expected.

For reference, from the IPCC AR4:
“the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report says “it is extremely likely that human activities have exerted a substantial net warming influence on climate since 1750,” where “extremely likely” indicates a probability greater than 95%.”

“It is also worth noting that the largest radiative impact of increased water vapor is predicted to be in the upper troposphere and there it is now well-documented that the water vapor does closely follow temperature trends and fluctuations there… where the data is most reliable because it is least susceptible to artifacts that can affect secular trends over longer time scales.”

Wrong, like almost every alarmist “prediction”. Global relative humidity has been declining for decades, and shows no signs of recovery. Tropospheric specific humidity is declining, too.

see here for a discussion of why the data set from one outlier re-analysis that is being pushed by Ken Gregory et al. (and is plotted in his graphs in a way, in terms of relative humidity, that makes it difficult to compare to expectations anyway) is not believable: http://geotest.tamu.edu/userfiles/216/Dessler10.pdf

Which part of “see here for a discussion of why the data set from one outlier re-analysis that is being pushed by Ken Gregory et al. (and is plotted in his graphs in a way, in terms of relative humidity, that makes it difficult to compare to expectations anyway) is not believable: http://geotest.tamu.edu/userfiles/216/Dessler10.pdf ” was confusing to you in my last comment?

Hmm-m-m. joelshore quotes something I never wrote. No matter, the fact is that relative humidity has been declining for decades, falsifying the always-easily-deconstructed CO2=AGW conjecture.

These circular arguments always lack one vital ingredient: verifiable, empirical, testable scientific evidence. Catastrophic AGW is an evidence-free hand-waving scam intended to keep the climate alarmist gravy train from being derailed. Who should we believe, the planet itself — or self-serving alarmists like joel shore and his pals?

Bill Illis says:
December 15, 2012 at 5:42 amThe first thing I did with the AR5 leak was to look up the water vapour data and studies they were using.

I understood right away what this report was going to be about – data selection and the refusal to use any data which contradicts the global warming mime.

I downloaded the water vapour forecasts that are being used in the IPCC AR5 awhile ago. AR5 has water vapour up by 6.0% already and it is forecast to be 24% higher by the year 2100.

If we look at the actual observational data, however, it is FLAT. The ENSO is really the biggest factor in its variability. Water vapour was only 0.4 kg/m2, 0.4 mms/m2 higher than normal (25 mms/m2) in November 2012 and it is now on the way down to Zero again given its response to the ENSO.

Water Vapour, the ENSO and the IPCC AR5 forecast from 1948 to November 2012.

Thanks for this very important comment – once again this is a story all about ENSO – water vapour is yet one more climate parameter – like global temperatures themselves – which meekly follow in step after the little boy and the little girl. Further confirmation of the thesis of Bob Tisdale that ENSO over the last half century has driven global temperatures – and with them, atmospheric water vapour. ENSO might just be about to take them both downhill for a while.

Mario Lento says: “Do you sincerely believe IPCC does not do research? When they come up with charts like the ( Figure 2. Summary of the principal components of the radiative forcing of climate change.) on this link [http://co2now.org/Know-the-Changing-Climate/Climate-System/ipcc-faq-human-natural-causes-climate-change.html ] by not doing research? They then without doing research claim CO2 (as the main human influence) is the main driver of climate change? .”

That claim comes from attribution studies, which are reviewed in the report, not from research by the IPCC. In the FAQ they do not give the references, but in the rest of the section close to the FAQ you can probably find these references.

Mario Lento says: “In answer to your question, of course the IPCC will not say, they used only correlation.”

They do not say so, because they do not do so. They make the claim of the relation between greenhouse gases and the temperature based on a physical understanding of the climate system. That is the main difference with people who think that the sun is responsible for the recent temperature rise, they might have a correlation, but they do not have a working mechanism. If you would like to make the sun a credible alternative hypothesis, you will have to find a physically possible amplification mechanism (the direct influence of the solar radiation is much too small).

D Böehm says: “Global relative humidity has been declining for decades, and shows no signs of recovery. Tropospheric specific humidity is declining, too.”

Is it too much to ask, not only to link to a picture, but to link to a text that explains the picture? Not everyone is so well informed as joeldshore, that would also allow the rest the relevance of the picture.

I would, for example, love to know whether your picture was for one station, the average over the land surface, or the average over the globe. As far as I know there is some indication that the relative humidity over land is decreasing as the temperature over land has increased more than the temperature over the ocean, which is the main source of humidity.

The problem with interpolation is temps are not linear over area. For instance if you look at the google maps I generated (second link), there are no stations in the middle of the arctic, they are all on the coasts. I explicitly did not want to extrapolate temps, as I think it leads to errors. I can see 3-4 degrees difference between stations 40 miles apart.

You seem to have misunderstood that extrapolation of temperatures enables the adoption of assumptions which can generate the results you want to obtain. Hence, such extrapolation is an essential part of the process for creating global and hemispheric temperature time series of use to e.g. the IPCC. Without the extrapolations there would be no possibility of doing this

“MiCro says: “If you noticed I started at 1950 to eliminate years with the fewest measurements. But, this is the raw data that warmists all use, prior to their adjustments.”

In other words, you did not homogenize your data? Then it is up to you to proof that this leads to more accurate results. The current understanding is that homogenization leads to more accurate trend estimates. ”

So, extracting a Min/Max from synoptic data isn’t okay, yet cherry picking stations (to homogenize for UHI) and making up data for areas that have not been measured is? What homogenization does is allow you to make up whatever trend you might want, especially once you allow proxy data to be mixed in.

If you think homogenization and extrapolation leads to better data, why don’t we just pick a single station’s data that we know is high quality, and just use that? That would be the ultimate homogenized/extrapolated chart then?

My secondary intention when I download all of this data (I have copies of GSoD, CRU’s, and Best’s) was to display what the actual data says, not some made up numbers.

I’ll also note that actual measurements show a flat trend in the Northern Hemisphere since about 1997-8, the tropics temps are almost flat, and the Southern Hemisphere while max temps are down some when compared to ~1965-70, Min temps are just down. And yes since I included all of the urban station I’ve included all of the UHI effects (which I’ve measured at my home compared to the local airports station), and I still have graphs that aren’t scary.

So of course homogenized (cough, cough made up) data is better, because the actual measurements will not inspire the correct amount of fear required to herd the public into submission.

The goal of the interpolation is to give every station a weight that corresponds to the area it is representative for. Stations in regions with little stations should be given a stronger weight as stations in regions with many stations. If you make a simple average over all stations, as MiCro did, you do not get a global climate signal, but basically one for the US and Europe.

If there are too few stations, such as at the poles, the interpolation method becomes important. An easy way out would be to ignore the poles, the way it is done in the CRU dataset. This is still a lot better than computing the climate trend for only the US and Europe.

MiCro: “If you think homogenization and extrapolation leads to better data, why don’t we just pick a single station’s data that we know is high quality, and just use that? That would be the ultimate homogenized/extrapolated chart then?”

1. There is probably no station without inhomogeneities. (The UHI effect is not the only inhomogeneity).
2. A single station shows much more variability as an average over a region. This makes it harder to see a small trend.
3. Climate variability is different everywhere. The variability of a single station is thus not representative for the global variability. This is also the reason why it is a problem that most of your stations are in the industrialised world, which is a very small part of the Earth, and thus why it is needed to put more weight on stations in data sparse regions.

“The goal of the interpolation is to give every station a weight that corresponds to the area it is representative for. Stations in regions with little stations should be given a stronger weight as stations in regions with many stations. If you make a simple average over all stations, as MiCro did, you do not get a global climate signal, but basically one for the US and Europe. ”

Did you actually follow the links to google maps? There are a lot of stations across the globe. And while older station data is sparse, it’s still better than proxy reconstruction data which is considered valid data by warmists when they like what it says.

“MiCro, could you explain why you see homogenization as “making up data”? Which steps of the homogenization procedure do you object to exactly, ”

“Changes that happen at only one of the stations are assumed to be non-climatic. The aim of homogenisation is to remove such non-climatic changes in the data.”

Because this is wrong!
As I pointed out I’ve watched the temps I’ve measured myself, while at the same time comparing the data to a station a couple miles away, as well as the station in the near by (35miles) major airport. Let me give you another example, weather fronts can have large differences on each side, which each evolve differently because of the direction of travel of the different air masses.

As I’ve also pointed out, I’m doing anomaly (difference) analysis, since I’m generating data based on measurements from the same station. Since my goal wasn’t to do the same thing Best did (and got the same homogenized answer everyone else does), I was looking at daily cooling.

And in my opinion, I’ve shown that water vapor controls the temps, and however much co2 tweaks temps. Water vapor regulates temps, not co2. The proof is when weather produces clear skies, and low humidity over a couple of days, the night time drop in temps is 2-3 times the average when clouds and humidity are at “normal” levels.
Richard, encouraged me to look for such records, in 112 million records, I’ve found 258 such records with matching (rare)conditions:
Average Falling temp=56.6F
Average Rising temp=56.5F
Max Falling temp=60.3F
Max Rising temp=59.4
Average Dew point=16.98F
Average Mean Temp=41.875F
Average Visibility=88.62 miles
Max Visibility=1000

Somehow the criteria got munged.
it should read:
falling_temp_diff greater than 55
AND wind_speed less than 10
AND rising_temp_diff greater than 55
and dewpoint less than temp
and rising_temp_diff greater than falling_temp_diff – 2
and rising_temp_diff less than falling_temp_diff + 2

MiCro says: “Did you actually follow the links to google maps? There are a lot of stations across the globe. And while older station data is sparse,…”

Those stations across the globe are very important, otherwise one could not compute a global climate signal from the station measurements. This does not change that the station density in the industrialized world is much higher and this need to be taken into account somehow.

MiCro says: “Because this is wrong! As I pointed out I’ve watched the temps I’ve measured myself, while at the same time comparing the data to a station a couple miles away, as well as the station in the near by (35miles) major airport. Let me give you another example, weather fronts can have large differences on each side, which each evolve differently because of the direction of travel of the different air masses.”

Fronts moving over the area and many other phenomena will produce weather noise. The further the stations are apart, the larger this noise will be. There may also be biases between two neighbouring stations. That is why difference time series are only used to search for inhomogeneities and determine the size of the jump. After homogenization the data from the neighbouring stations are not the same, there will still be a difference in the mean, the noise will still be different, there many still be smaller inhomogeneities in the data and small differences in the local climate variability, only the clear systematic jumps as seen in the difference time series are removed.

MiCro says: “And in my opinion, I’ve shown that water vapor controls the temps, and however much co2 tweaks temps. Water vapor regulates temps, not co2.”

That is right, water is a much stronger greenhouse gas as CO2. The reason for worrying more about CO2 is that the water flows in the hydrological cycle are so large that humans cannot influence the humidity directly. The humidity we add simply rains out again. We can only increase humidity indirectly by increasing CO2, which increases the temperature, which allows the atmosphere to hold more humidity. Humans are able to increase the atmospheric CO2 concentration, because CO2 is not removed fast enough from the atmosphere by the oceans and the land.

“We can only increase humidity indirectly by increasing CO2, which increases the temperature, which allows the atmosphere to hold more humidity. Humans are able to increase the atmospheric CO2 concentration, because CO2 is not removed fast enough from the atmosphere by the oceans and the land.”

This hypothesis is yet to be proven by measurements, and I think the data I’ve generated proves it to be false.

What I’ve shown in the data is that water vapor controls temps, period.

Contrary to the consensus, science doesn’t work based on Holmesian logic, you can’t prove a hypothesis with a simulator that’s coded as if it was fact, and the chart from AR5 showing measured temps falling out of the GCM model temp ranges is just more proof of how wrong.

“Those stations across the globe are very important, otherwise one could not compute a global climate signal from the station measurements. This does not change that the station density in the industrialized world is much higher and this need to be taken into account somehow.”

Let me also note that when you analyze the tropics and southern hemisphere separately (which I do), it doesn’t matter how many stations are in the northern hemisphere.

You ask questions, but you don’t seem to be learning anything. Try to get out of your mental rut. CO2 is not a problem. If it was a problem, we would have evidence of it. But there are no empirical measurements showing any global damage or harm due to the rise in CO2.

In fact, the rise of CO2 has been beneficial. Agricultural yields are clearly increasing as a direct result. And although a couple of degrees warmer would make the planet more pleasant and livable, that is not happening despite the rise in [harmless, beneficial] CO2.

Try to get your mind out of the rut that 24/7/365 alarmist propaganda has caused. Those people have a self-serving agenda. They want to scare you with a false alarm, and it appears that they have succeeded.

Nothing unusual is occurring. Temperatures have been both higher and lower throughout the Holocene, when CO2 was much lower. Think for yourself. Doesn’t that indicate that CO2 does not have the claimed effect? The ultimate Authority — Planet Earth — is proving the alarmist crowd wrong. You can’t see that?

mpainter, are you referring to the funny hype of the climate ostriches about a climatologically short and cherry picked period of 16 years with no significant warming? Then the answer is easy: natural variability. Just look at the graph of the average temperature over the last 100 years and you will see that there were always periods in which the temperature growth stagnated and ones in which it went up faster. The relationship between greenhouse gas concentrations and temperature is only visible on long time scales.

I would also love to get out of that rut. If I could do so with good arguments, I would get a Nobel price. Can you offer any help? I hope to be able to proof soon that the temperature trend estimates as not as accurate as we think, which would be fun, but destroying the mechanism or just a reasonable alternative hypothesis would be the main price.

You are a lost soul, incapable of admitting that the Null Hypothesis has never been falsified. And your comments about natural variability are simply the old Argumenttum ad Ignorantium fallacy: “Since I can’t think of any other reason, then CO2 must be the cause of global warming.” Since the alarmist crowd has not got anything right yet, are you still willing to believe everything they tell you to believe? Really?

Dear mister Böehm, I guess you mean climate scientists with the term “alarmists”.

I am at least sure that they got one thing right. They told us that their statistical homogenization algorithms improved the quality of climate data and makes the estimate of trends more accurate. Thus I have organized a validation study and generated a dataset with known inhomogeneities and ask the climatologists to remove them.

Mister Böehm, maybe it is superfluous to say so, but my one counter example is logically sufficient to disproof your rather strong and absolute statement that “the alarmist crowd has not got anything right yet”.

I looked at your blog, which you claim is your authority. That is somewhat circular, no?

You report on the unreliable Surface Stations network, but I would prefer to listen to Anthony Watts, who has done considerable work on the USHCN network. Anthony shows that USHCN data is useless. When you input worthless data, what do you expect to see in the output? Your ‘study’ is a perfect example of GIGO.

Concerning the recent 16-year period of no discernible warming at 95% confidence, at December 18, 2012 at 12:02 pm you assert

The cherry picking in this case wasn’t the stations used, but the period selected.

Bollocks!
There is NO such “cherry picking”.

“The period selected” starts from now and considers how far back in time one has to assess before discerning global warming at 95% confidence.

This is important because in 2008 the US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) stated in its State of the Climate Report for 2008 (page 23)

The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 yr or more, suggesting that an observed absence of warming of this duration is needed to create a discrepancy with the expected present-day warming rate.

Please note the strength of that statement: it says the models’ simulations RULE OUT a zero trend of 15 years or more, but that has happened.

In other words, the 16-year period of no discernible global warming (at 95% confidence) demonstrates the climate models are wrong.

“This study was blind, so that these “alarmists” could not cheat. The results showed that homogenization improved the temperature data as promised. ”

If your data has Min/Max daily temp records, I’d be more than will to examine that data.

“The cherry picking in this case wasn’t the stations used, but the period selected. The period of 16 years was optimized not to show any trend.”

But as you can see, I did no such picking, actual measured data has the trend flat for the last 16 (or so ) years.
Why this is critical is that models, being coded (through the CS algorithms) to force an increase of temps with increasing co2, can not and do not show the actual measured flat temps.

Böehm, I do not like authority that much, I prefer good arguments and clear formulations. My blog helps me to have to type a little less when commenting. I understand that you would prefer to listen to Anthony Watts.

richardscourtney, I feel the statement of NOAA is much too strong and would say that climate models are not that well suited to study natural variability and are bound to underestimate it because not all relevant processes are taken into account.

But NOAA are save by luck. The 15 year temperature trend they mention is significantly positive, just as the 17 year temperature trend. It is only the 16 year temperature trend that is marginally not significant. And if you take into account that David Rose searched for such a case, you have to take multiple testing into account. (Multiple testing: If you search for relationships between x and 20 other variables, one of these 20 relationships will be statistically “significant” at the typical 5% level by accident.)

MiCro, yes the validation study includes minimum (Tn) and maximum (Tx) temperature, as well as mean temperature (Tm). You can download the homogeneous, inhomogeneous and homogenized data from my homepage. There you can also find a link to the open access article with results and a report with all the detail on how the data was generated. Have fun with the analysis. It is monthly data, however, and without corresponding humidity, thus it would not help you to study the relationship between the DTR and humidity.

Climate models are not forced to respond to an increase in CO2 with a temperature increase. They compute a simplified 1-dimensional version of the radiative transfer equation, an equation that is also used in weather prediction models, in astronomy and to interpret laboratory experiments with electromagnetic radiation. If you searching for an error in the climate models, radiative transfer would be the last place I would look. You have more chances of finding problems if you look at feedbacks, such as humidity.

Given its importance, I feel that humidity is studied much to less. Thus I am looking forward to any results you will show in future, at least if you perform them in a reliable way. If you can proof that one of the standard steps leads to wrong results, that would be very interesting and a perfect reason to use a better alternative. If not, please use the best tools around. Many of them can be freely used, for example here is a list with open source homogenization algorithms.

vvenema says:
“I would also love to get out of that rut. If I could do so with good arguments, I would get a Nobel price. Can you offer any help?”
=========================================================================
I would, if you promise to share your Nobel prize with me. Try the saturation theory. If CO2 is at saturation, then the effect of added increments is now negligible. This is an opportunity going begging. What you should do is compose about ten pounds of documents and charts, roll it into a big roll, and smite climate scientists with it. I promise that you will be awarded a Nobel Prize and freedom medals galore from a greatful world.

vvenema says:
December 18, 2012 at 1:38 pmBut NOAA are save by luck. The 15 year temperature trend they mention is significantly positive, just as the 17 year temperature trend. It is only the 16 year temperature trend that is marginally not significant.

It depends on your data set. For example RSS has a negative slope for the last 15 years and 16 years. And while the slope from the last 17 years to the last 23 years is positive, it is NOT significant at the two sigma level. Here are the numbers.

For RSS: +0.130 +/-0.136 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1990
For RSS: +0.135 +/-0.147 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1991
For RSS: +0.142 +/-0.159 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1992
For RSS: +0.107 +/-0.166 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1993
For RSS: +0.069 +/-0.174 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1994
For RSS: +0.043 +/-0.190 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1995
For RSS: +0.036 +/-0.210 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1996
For RSS: -0.003 +/-0.229 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1997
For RSS: -0.045 +/-0.250 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1998

@Victor Venema: You wrote: “That is the main difference with people who think that the sun is responsible for the recent temperature rise, they might have a correlation, but they do not have a working mechanism.”

I believe there are working mechanisms – but I will counter in this way.

The IPCC do not have a “working” mechanism or model.

They only had correlation, which they immensely relied upon. Their entire theory is predicated on the “past” belief that CO2 was rising and this causes the temperatures to rise. I believe that many of IPCC’s members no longer believe CO2 drives climate such that it will lead to catastrophe. That means I think those who do not speak out are dishonest.

Werner Brozek says: “It depends on your data set. For example RSS has a negative slope for the last 15 years and 16 years. And while the slope from the last 17 years to the last 23 years is positive, it is NOT significant at the two sigma level.”

I only mentioned the significance of the 15 year trend, to illustrate that the 16-year period selected by David Rose was cherry picked. Sorry, if I do not worry that there is no significant positive trend in a short dataset of doubtfull quality. The long term trend in good quality data is clearly positive. No one has explained to me why I should see the worst trend estimate as more important.

By the way, do the authors of the RSS dataset say something about the uncertainty of its trends? I just read a somewhat older paper in which the trend in the RSS dataset was said to be double of the trend in the uah dataset. As these differences resolved yet, or should we still see this difference as a measure of the uncertainty of satellite estimates of surface temperatu
re trends?

D Böehm says: “Thank you for correcting vvenema. Unfortunately, he will not get out of his rut because he keeps making incorrect statements.”

Dear Mister Böehm, I just caught you making an incorrect statement. If you do not give an argument why my argument was wrong, I will presume that you acknowledge that you made an incorrect statement.
Especially in that case, it would be good form to explictly say which statement of mine you see as incorrect, so that we can discuss this topic.

May I ask, are you from Austria and can you read German. Your (distant) family member Reinhard Böhm, who unfortunately recently died, has written a beautiful book on climate change: “Heiße Luft – Reizwort Klimawandel Fakten – Ängste – Geschäfte”. You may like it, he is far from an alarmist and maybe you do trust family.

Mario Lento says: “I believe there are working mechanisms – but I will counter in this way.”

One would be sufficient.

Mario Lento says: “The IPCC do not have a “working” mechanism or model. They only had correlation, which they immensely relied upon. Their entire theory is predicated on the “past” belief that CO2 was rising and this causes the temperatures to rise. I believe that many of IPCC’s members no longer believe CO2 drives climate such that it will lead to catastrophe. That means I think those who do not speak out are dishonest.”

Do I understand you right, that you are even doubting that the CO2 concentration is increasing?

Our understand of the climate is not based on correlation. It is based on our physical understanding of the physical processes in the climate system, which are partially implemented in global climate models. If the results of the global climate models would not fit (correlate) with reality that would be a problem, but you should not forget the physical reasoning.

What do you call a catastrophe? Estimating what the consequences will be is very difficult as you need to know how people will respond to climate change. That is no longer natural science and consequently more a matter of believe. Feel free to spread as much doubt about this as you can. What worries me about this blog is that the basic facts are doubted without good arguments and that posts that misinform such as this guest post do not create an outcry. Don’t you want to well informed?

Victor Venema says:
December 19, 2012 at 2:31 amBy the way, do the authors of the RSS dataset say something about the uncertainty of its trends? I just read a somewhat older paper in which the trend in the RSS dataset was said to be double of the trend in the uah dataset. As these differences resolved yet, or should we still see this difference as a measure of the uncertainty of satellite estimates of surface temperature trends?

Thank you Werner Brozek, looks like the problem of the strong trend differences in the satellite records has been solved. The trend of RSS and UAH is very similar; they could still both be wrong; one is always most sceptical about the things you know least about, in my case satellite data.

The uncertainty in the trend in the Skeptical Science tool is estimated purely statistically, according to the paper they link to. If there were a bias in the trend, such a statistical estimate would not notice. Thus the true uncertainty is probably larger.

The trend from 1979 to now of RSS is: 0.133 +/- 0.073 °C per decade at the 2 sigma level. I have no idea what you should take as uncertainty due to remaining inhomogeneities in the satellite record, but that may be significant. Interesting is that you reported:
For RSS: +0.130 +/-0.136 C/decade at the two sigma level from 1990
While the trend from 1979 to 1990 is basically flat. This shows how important having a sufficiently long period is to get significant results.

A really nice tool. It also shows for GISTEMP that between 1940 and 1980, a 40 year period, there was no trend. That puts a puny 16-year period in perspective. In both cases it is cherry picking the right period, naturally.

Dear Richard S. Courtney, given that the situation is probably symmetrical and we both are doubting the honesty and mental capacities of the others, it might be more productive to discus very specific questions as general advice.

That is also how science progresses. Although scientists can be weird, unconventional and sceptical people, if you split up a problem in sufficiently small sub-problems, in the end you end up with problems which are sufficiently small and clear that every rational being can agree upon the answer.

Thankyou for the comment in your post at December 19, 2012 at 10:26 am which says

Dear Richard S. Courtney, given that the situation is probably symmetrical and we both are doubting the honesty and mental capacities of the others, it might be more productive to discus very specific questions as general advice.

That is also how science progresses. Although scientists can be weird, unconventional and sceptical people, if you split up a problem in sufficiently small sub-problems, in the end you end up with problems which are sufficiently small and clear that every rational being can agree upon the answer.

I agree, and I appreciate your taking my comment to you with the genuine sincerity with which it was offered.

I see you have started to discuss the MSU data with Werner Brozek along the lines you suggest of “sufficiently small sub-problems”. Werner has made himself expert in use of the on-line tools for assessing linear temperature trends. Indeed, I have adopted the practice of quoting him when citing such trends because I trust his expertise. However, I doubt that linear trends are appropriate for assessing global and hemispheric temperature time series. Despite my doubts, I accept that those who present the time series say they like linear trends so your interaction with Werner may prove productive.

Unfortunately, I am to leave on one of my absences tomorrow so will be isolated from the internet again until some time in the New Year. You are new to WUWT so are probably unaware that I often go on these absences: please be assured that it is not a measure to avoid interaction with you and I would welcome such interaction upon my return.

It also shows for GISTEMP that between 1940 and 1980, a 40 year period, there was no trend. That puts a puny 16-year period in perspective. In both cases it is cherry picking the right period, naturally.

The above shows that CO2 could not have been the driver it was claimed to be. It is generally accepted that CO2 really went up after around 1945. However as for the “puny 16-year period”, you will have to take that up with NOAA. They believe 15 years of no warming is highly significant.

However as for the “puny 16-year period”, you will have to take that up with NOAA. They believe 15 years of no warming is highly significant.

Except that what they said differs from your 15 years claim in two very important aspects:

(1) They talked about the temperature trend after correcting for ENSO in a way described in a paper they referenced.

(2) They said that a trend of zero for 15 years would be outside of the 95% significance cone of the modeling results. However, the trend hasn’t been zero for the last 15 years. Claiming the trend is zero vs claiming that the 95% significance cone on the actual trend includes a trend of zero are two very different things.

joeldshore says:
December 19, 2012 at 5:13 pm(1) They talked about the temperature trend after correcting for ENSO in a way described in a paper they referenced.
(2) However, the trend hasn’t been zero for the last 15 years.

I did not go deeper into the report, but if your point 1 is true, and I am not saying it isn’t, then CO2 is clearly NOT the huge driver they thought it was. After all, there was an El Nino in 2010, and at least 4 data sets still have 1998 as the hottest year.
As for your point 2, it depends on the data set.
Data sets with a o slope for at least 15 years:
1. HadCrut3: since April 1997 or 15 years, 7 months (goes to October)
2. Sea surface temperatures: since March 1997 or 15 years, 8 months (goes to October)
3. RSS: since January 1997 or 15 years, 11 months (goes to November)

However in view of the significance of the 16 years lately, I would like to elaborate on RSS. The slope for 15 years and 11 months from January 1997 on RSS is -4.1 x 10^-4. But the slope for 16 years and 0 months from December 1996 is +1.3 x 10^-4. So since the magnitude of the negative slope since January 1997 is 3 times than the magnitude of the positive slope since December 1996, I believe I can say that since a quarter of the way through December 1996, in other words from December 8, 1996 to December 7, 2012, the slope is 0. This is 16 years. Therefore RSS is 192/204 or 94% of the way to Santer’s 17 years.

Werner Brozek, CO2 is indeed not a huge driver of the climate. The sun is much more important: simply compare the large size of the day cycle and the annual cycle with the small, about 1 degree, change in the long term climate. And as MiCro has shown also the variability of the daily cycle depends much more on humidity, as much stronger greenhouse gas as CO2. The difference is that CO2 (Methan and Distickstoffmonoxid, etc.) are increasing, whereas we cannot directly change humidity as it would rain out and the long term changes in insolation are too small.

Furthermore, these greenhouse gasses increase the amount of energy available at the surface. Only a small part of this energy goes into increasing the temperature, the largest part of this additional energy is absorbed by the ocean.

For all of these reasons it is important to look at longer periods. There is strong natural variability in the climate system.

Werner Brozek: I don’t think your results mean much. You are carefully cherrypicking just the right interval, just the right data set to maximize the effect of the Super El Nino of 1998 and get the result that you want (i.e., the lowest slope possible). By changing things even a little bit, say, adding one more year to the start of the data, one changes the result significantly. Presumably, this sensitivity would be less true in a data set corrected for El Nino, which is why they talk about the need to correct for it.

As for your statement, “I did not go deeper into the report, but if your point 1 is true, and I am not saying it isn’t, then CO2 is clearly NOT the huge driver they thought it was,” as Victor has explained, you are creating a strawman argument. It is not so much that CO2 is such a huge driver but rather that it is one thing that is changing by a huge fractional amount and is responsible for a slow but steady trend over time. Things like El Nino can have huge effects but they are fluctuations…They don’t give a significant contribution to the trend over the long term (although they can significantly affect trends measured over the short term).

joeldshore says:
December 20, 2012 at 7:25 amBy changing things even a little bit, say, adding one more year to the start of the data, one changes the result significantly.

It is not so much that CO2 is such a huge driver but rather that it is one thing that is changing by a huge fractional amount and is responsible for a slow but steady trend over time.

Victor Venema says:
December 20, 2012 at 2:10 am

Only a small part of this energy goes into increasing the temperature

First of all, with regards to the statement by Victor and the second statement by Joel, I agree, but would add that the influence of CO2 is so small that it is NOT worth spending billions of dollars on things like carbon capture to reduce it.

Now as for the first statement by Joel above, changing RSS from 16 years to 15 years does have a huge affect, but not as you expected! See below. For 16 years, from December 1996, the slope is almost flat with a value of 0.000129266 per year. But from the 15 years from December 1997, the slope is -0.00464267 per year.

Dear Werner Brozek, this is a part where I am not knowledgeable, but as I private citizen, I agree with you that carbon capture is likely much too expensive and will likely never be applied in large scale. This technology is mainly hyped to make it politically easier to build new coal power plants by suggesting that later a carbon capture facility will be build.

But let’s see. Human ingenuity is almost unlimited. Being able to make money with reducing greenhouse gas emissions will unleash a lot of creativity.

“Being able to make money with reducing greenhouse gas emissions will unleash a lot of creativity.”

Ouch, The money being made is all going to be a large incremental cost to every man, woman and child on the planet, and a deadly cost to the poorest in the world, for zero additional value, well other than for making already rich people richer.

And to put this comment into perspective, I would probably be called a raging capitalist (capitalistic pig??) by about 3/4 the planet.

But let’s see. Human ingenuity is almost unlimited. Being able to make money with reducing greenhouse gas emissions will unleash a lot of creativity.
=====================
Yes, indeed. It started years ago.

“Environment Canada wants to spend $6 billion to reduce the atmospheric concentration of a trace molecule by 0.01 ppmv, and assuming there is any advantage in doing so, supposedly cutting global temps by 0.0007°C.”

When an oil company in our province asked for input for their carbon capture plan, I wrote about the huge costs for little gain. They thanked me for my input but it made no difference.

@Victor Venema:
A couple of things.
I never said I do not believe CO2 is increasing. It seems to be on an ever increasing slope upwards. It seems that man’s burning of fossil fuels is contributing… but also as well, it seems that the warm up since the LIA has contributed to some of the release.

I am saying there is no evidence that CO2 is a driver of climate. The models that the IPCC creates (that you say does not technically count as research) are not evidence of CO2 driving climate.

Rather than be verbose, please point to something concrete that shows CO2 drives our climate. Substantiate the claim that the warming up through 1998, was caused with at least 90% confidence, by increases in man made CO2.

The IPCC claims Catastrophic not me, so why would I need to define it? But I will humor you and say that the costs implemented to try to control climate are catastrophic. People are suffering and many deaths can be blamed on policies created as a result of the IPCC. Would you like proof of that? Do you feel any amount of shame for helping promote death?

Victor Venema wrote:
“If you would like to make the sun a credible alternative hypothesis, you will have to find a physically possible amplification mechanism (the direct influence of the solar radiation is much too small).”
+++++
Nice try by stating that a small change in solar irradiance is all that is claimed in many studies which show the sun has more of an effect on climate than simply is TSI. You must be aware of these studies. Your only point can be that you want other people to ignore the science that is so inconvenient to your IPCC brethren. There is much more evidence that is backed up by observation (which you confuse with correlation). Consider several theories which bare out that the sun’s solar winds affect our magnetic flux, which in turn affects cosmic rays… where there is credible evidence that cloud formation follows these changes. That the sun provides energy which affects whether patterns leading to conditions described by ENSO. People have made predictions based on these conditions… and unlike your IPCC, they have not been invalidated by observation. People predicted that the warming would stop and it did. IPCC predicted it would increase and it did not.

I purposely am not putting forth the effort to provide detail since there’s a plethora of good science which is completely ignored because it’s not funded by tax payer money and is inconvenient to your singular fantasy to prove a hypothesis with wildly dangerous claims. Please spare me with your (and IPCC’s) claim that only TSI should be considered as the sun’s contribution to our climate.

@ Victor Venema: Surely you has looked into Bob Tisdale’s work regarding ENSO and cloud formation and the energy budget being directly affected by cloud changes. The sun has an inconvenient way of interacting with our planet such that there are feedback mechanisms that you must have looked into. That you ignore them, doesn’t mean they do not exist. That you can only consider CO2 as a driver of climate is silly given the track record and tax payer money spent to the detriment of mankind’s right to prosper. If your CAGW theory and models had any value, they’d have some sort of track record beyond the correlation.

Werner Brozek says: December 20, 2012 at 5:55 pm
================================
Here Werner Brozek touches on how the oil companies have moved to capitalize on the global warming panic. This aspect is buried deeply in the story at the link he provides. CO2 is a most useful and valuable commodity in oil production, used in secondary recovery efforts after initial production has depleted reservoir pressures. The depleted field can be re-pressurized by injecting CO2 into the reservoir, and this very efficiently flushes out residual oil. For a large field, this can mean billions in additional profits from the field. But the “capture and storage” of the necessary CO2 is costly, and the oil companies are trying to hook some public funding to pay for this. BP is a leader in such schemes, and actually abets the global warmers in their efforts to mobilize public opinion behind their AGW agenda, and other big oil companies do likewise. The public cost of enhancing oil company profits are shuffled off on a gullible public. So, when you hear a global warmer screeching about “shills for the oil industry” you know he speaks the truth, for he is one. Ironic, is it not?

MiCro: “Ouch, The money being made is all going to be a large incremental cost to every man, woman and child on the planet, and a deadly cost to the poorest in the world, for zero additional value, well other than for making already rich people richer.”

We’ll see how expensive it will be. That depends on human ingenuity. And it also depends a lot on whether we start soon. It would have, for example, been good if all the houses we have build since 1990 would have had good isolation. That would have saved a lot of money as isolating an existing building is much more expensive. The faster the adaptation will have to be organized, the more it will cost. Thus, ironically, with your successful delay tactics, you guys are responsible for much of the costs.

In Germany energy is more expensive per Joule, but families do not pay more for energy as in the US. They use less, live in better isolated houses and drive in smaller cars, etc.

I am not sure whether the consequences of climate change would be catastrophic, but as a citizen I do expect that additional weather related damage and averting danger will very costly. If you say that there is “zero additional value”, does that mean that you are denying even the climate change that has already happened?

Who will pay for the costs (the poor or the rich) is a political decision. Given the political position of most climate “skeptics”, it sounds very, very weird, that you act as if you cared about larger changes in wealth.

Whether mitigating climate change is expensive does not change the facts about the climate. Let’s first try to agree up on that.

“It would have, for example, been good if all the houses we have build since 1990 would have had good isolation. That would have saved a lot of money as isolating an existing building is much more expensive. ”

While in general I don’t disagree, adding extra insulation during construction increases the cost of the home, and every time you create new regulations such as this, it increases costs, and forces reductions someplace else.

“In Germany energy is more expensive per Joule, but families do not pay more for energy as in the US. They use less, live in better isolated houses and drive in smaller cars, etc.”

This touches on something that really makes me mad. I like high performance cars, I also take long trips, sometimes with a SUV full of people, while towing a trailer. And as above high gasoline prices is a big impact on my ability to afford doing this. As you note, Europeans who are not rich, drive very small cars, if they have a car at all. While many of the people responsible for your gas tax are rich, and drive large Merc’s, BMW’s, etc,etc. The cost of gas doesn’t impact them, it impacts “average” people who drive Smart cars, and Mini’s. Now, that might be okay in Europe, but it is not acceptable to me (nor it appears most Americans).

“I am not sure whether the consequences of climate change would be catastrophic, but as a citizen I do expect that additional weather related damage and averting danger will very costly. If you say that there is “zero additional value”, does that mean that you are denying even the climate change that has already happened?”

Climate change has happened, though I’m not sure how much after how much the actual station data is tortured to get a rising trend, but the question is how much is from CO2, which I believe is maybe 0.2 degrees. To put that into perspective, there are location on the planet that can see a 60F Rise/Fall in the same day, and where I live can see 110F swing from the lowest temps in winter, to the highest temps in summer. There is no reason this fraction of a degree should be the cause of the concern it’s been elevated to.

It also seems to me that all of the temp change we’ve measured could be just a small increase in the area between the northern and southern jet streams, which would allow tropical air to cover a bit more area. There’s also no evidence IMO, that makes this warming trend unusual or unique.

“Who will pay for the costs (the poor or the rich) is a political decision. Given the political position of most climate “skeptics”, it sounds very, very weird, that you act as if you cared about larger changes in wealth.”

Why should anyone have to pay for it?

I noticed your post on the physics of CO2 warming, I’ve also spent time examining this, my conclusion is that the 10u-14u absorption bands of CO2 are trivial. First to radiate out the same number of joules that one hour of Sunlight provides at .5u will take 20 hours at 10u, and there’s no evidence in the daily Rise/Fall data that this exists.
But here’s an experiment, I live in Ohio, ~ 41North Lat, being in Germany it’s probably cold there, so you can maybe try this. It’s 30F outside today, and I have a single pane of glass in a storm door. Your hand is pretty sensitive to temps, go outside and without touching the glass see how close you have to get your hand to feel any warmth from the IR that’s radiating through the glass. With 70F inside, and 30F outside, I couldn’t feel any warmth, can you?
The amount of IR present should be far larger than any DLR from CO2.
The premiss that this IR is causing catastrophic warming is absurd.

Mario Lento: “I am saying there is no evidence that CO2 is a driver of climate. The models that the IPCC creates (that you say does not technically count as research) are not evidence of CO2 driving climate.”

And the IPCC also does not develop any climate models. They are developed by a number of weather services, research institutes and universities. The IPCC does coordinate some of the simulations that are performed with these models, so that these simulations can be easily compared to each other. If you’d like you could see that as coordinating a small part of science.

Mario Lento: “Rather than be verbose, please point to something concrete that shows CO2 drives our climate. Substantiate the claim that the warming up through 1998, was caused with at least 90% confidence, by increases in man made CO2.”

What would you see a concrete evidence that an apple falls down due to gravity? Are you sure it is not due to electrical forces between the apple and the Earth or due to cosmic rays from outer space bombarding the apple down?

To me the measurement of the absorption spectrum of CO2 and all the other greenhouse gasses in the laboratory and in experiments clearly show that these greenhouse gasses absorb sufficient radiation. We also understand physically why these absorption spectra look like the way they do. If we put these absorption spectra into an radiative transfer model, we get warming at the surface. These radiative transfer models are used in many sciences and many implementations of them have been compared to each other.

That is about as direct as any scientific phenomenon gets. Which step do you not find convincing? The difficult part are the feedbacks in the climate system. For example the cloud feedback, which you mention, as well as feedback via changes in the land surface. I have worked on both topics, not on the feedback directly, but in trying to understand the physics better and to measure cloud properties more accurately.

The existence of a feedback does not mean that it will be a negative feedback, it may also be a positive one or it may be weak. Global models do not model clouds and the land surface very well. Thus in this aspect they may well contain errors. Especially as experiments are not possible in climatology. Still, I feel it would be highly immoral to simply assume that there exists a strong negative feedback without any proof.

Mario Lento: “Do you feel any amount of shame for helping promote death?”

I could ask the same, but let’s not go down to this level. I am surprised that this comment was not deleted. Are trolls not removed if they fight science?

Mario Lento: “where there is credible evidence that cloud formation follows these changes.”

Could you cite that study? As far as I know, physicists (maybe I should stress here that they are not climatologists) did experiments as found that cosmic rays cannot create a significant amount of clouds. You are the one who only has correlations.

Mario Lento: “That the sun provides energy which affects whether patterns leading to conditions described by ENSO.”

The sun provides the energy for any climatic phenomenon, including climate change.

Mario Lento: “I purposely am not putting forth the effort to provide detail since there’s a plethora of good science which is completely ignored because it’s not funded by tax payer money and is inconvenient to your singular fantasy to prove a hypothesis with wildly dangerous claims.”

It is a pity that you are not referring to that work, that would make your argument stronger. I am sure that some scientists did look at these arguments and found them unconvincing.

That not more people are listening to you and your fellow climate ostriches is because you have such a tradition of misinformation. Every post at WUWT on a topic where I am knowledgeable contained serious mistakes or missed information that the reader needed to understand the post. Consequently, this blog has build a reputation that it does not pay scientifically to follow up its stories.

This guest post is a good example of this. And no one here complained about being misinformed. No one said, I do not believe in climate change, but Forest Mims misinformed me and that is wrong. I do not like being misinformed and I feel that this gives our community a bad reputation. Please, Mr Watts never ever have a guest post by Mr Mims again.

This touches on something that really makes me mad. I like high performance cars, I also take long trips, sometimes with a SUV full of people, while towing a trailer. And as above high gasoline prices is a big impact on my ability to afford doing this.

Life’s rough. I like certain things too, like sushi. That doesn’t mean that society should subsidize my purchase of these things, whether that subsidy is direct or is indirect (because I am not paying the environmental costs for the product).

Climate change has happened, though I’m not sure how much after how much the actual station data is tortured to get a rising trend, but the question is how much is from CO2, which I believe is maybe 0.2 degrees.

Frankly, what you believe interests me much less than what the scientists in the field believe.

To put that into perspective, there are location on the planet that can see a 60F Rise/Fall in the same day, and where I live can see 110F swing from the lowest temps in winter, to the highest temps in summer. There is no reason this fraction of a degree should be the cause of the concern it’s been elevated to.

To put it in another perspective, 15000 years ago, the global climate was somewhere around 5 to 7 C cooler and my current location in Rochester was covered by a mile or two of glacial ice. And, sea levels were more than 100 meters lower than they are today.

I noticed your post on the physics of CO2 warming, I’ve also spent time examining this, my conclusion is that the 10u-14u absorption bands of CO2 are trivial.

Again, while I am happy you have done your examinations, others have done much more sophisticated calculations. And, while the effect of CO2 may not be huge in percentage terms, it is big enough. Look, during the last ice age, temperatures were only about 2% cooler on an absolute temperature scale. Nonetheless, that was enough to make a considerable difference in our climate and sea levels.

joeldshore: “To put it in another perspective, 15000 years ago, the global climate was somewhere around 5 to 7 C cooler and my current location in Rochester was covered by a mile or two of glacial ice. And, sea levels were more than 100 meters lower than they are today.”

If I were part of this world-wide conspiracy of climatologists, I would at least have voted to say that the temperature is going down. That scares people much more than global warming. Still any change in climate is costly as the infrastructure has been build based on the current climate. And indeed the current sea level, I would add as Dutch citizen.

MiCro, keep on driving and reading WUWT to relieve the cognitive dissonance.

Victor, I don’t have any “cognitive dissonance” from driving, I have it from observations of nightly cooling, and a lack of any measurable warming for all this co2.
It’s sad that warmists ignore
the salient points, and goes after the irrelevant.

However, do you really think that the existence of variability is an argument against a trend in the mean?

Do you think we did not have any economic growth the last 23 years *because* of the large differences in income and wealth? Do you think Americans are not getting bigger, both in height and weight, because there is such a huge variability in height and weight? Do you think there is no difference in the precipitation amount between the US and the tropics (he, some days it doesn’t rain at all)?

A simple yes or no would be great and not another detour into another topic.

Except maybe that I am curious what you think of being misinformed by Forest Mims, Alec Rawls and Matt Ridley. Why doesn’t anybody respond to that here? Don’t you mind?

I’m not saying there isn’t a change in the mean, just that It’s insignificant, and that only a small part is due to co2.

I base that on no evidence of a loss of cooling, and that cooling is well regulated by water vapor, not co2. There’s evidence that the natural daily variability of temps without water vapor to be a multiple of the variability with water vapor.
I’ve also suggested simple examinations any one can do to show that any heat reflected by co2 isn’t causing warming.

And while it will be a while before I have time to work on your data, you have it as well, and I think if you looked at cooling as I did (follow the link in my name on earlier posts) the evidence is clear, whatever is warming the planet, it is mostly no co2.

Oh, I’m not sure if there are errors in those posts or not, if there are i think its inportant to point them out, so it doesn’t negatively effect our cause.
but I’ve come to my own conclusions about the topic, and their errors are not being forced on me by the government .

MiCro, it is not too difficult to compare the one sentence quoted by Anthony Watts from the article with the paragraph in which is was written. That would be sufficient to see that the suggestion that there is no trend is wrong, but that the authors wrote that they did not compute a trend.

Gail Combs, I am no expert for paleo climate. However, after the above mentioned three misquotes in one week and after having found serious problems in every single post on WUWT on topics where I am knowledgeable, e.g. two posts on homogenization of climate data.

Victor Venema says:
December 20, 2012 at 12:21 pm
“Being able to make money with reducing greenhouse gas emissions will unleash a lot of creativity.”

Yep. From the German renewables subsidies sprang forth the mightiest lobbyist organisation the world has ever seen. They understood that their future lies in
a) improving their product
or
b) lobbying for more subsidies.

@victor venema” You wrote “Do I understand you right, that you are even doubting that the CO2 concentration is increasing?”

If you read what I wrote, I did not say, or imply that. But it’s evident that YOU believe anyone who does not think CO2 drives climate must also believe CO2 is not increasing. You have failed to give one single piece of evidence that CO2 drives climate. Only correlation… which ended 15 to 17 years ago.

@Victor Venema:
YOU tried to answer this:
Mario Lento: “Rather than be verbose, please point to something concrete that shows CO2 drives our climate. Substantiate the claim that the warming up through 1998, was caused with at least 90% confidence, by increases in man made CO2.”

with this:
What would you see a concrete evidence that an apple falls down due to gravity? Are you sure it is not due to electrical forces between the apple and the Earth or due to cosmic rays from outer space bombarding the apple down?

To me the measurement of the absorption spectrum of CO2 and all the other greenhouse gasses in the laboratory and in experiments clearly show that these greenhouse gasses absorb sufficient radiation. We also understand physically why these absorption spectra look like the way they do. If we put these absorption spectra into an radiative transfer model, we get warming at the surface. These radiative transfer models are used in many sciences and many implementations of them have been compared to each other.

That is about as direct as any scientific phenomenon gets. Which step do you not find convincing? The difficult part are the feedbacks in the climate system. For example the cloud feedback, which you mention, as well as feedback via changes in the land surface. I have worked on both topics, not on the feedback directly, but in trying to understand the physics better and to measure cloud properties more accurately.

The existence of a feedback does not mean that it will be a negative feedback, it may also be a positive one or it may be weak. Global models do not model clouds and the land surface very well. Thus in this aspect they may well contain errors. Especially as experiments are not possible in climatology. Still, I feel it would be highly immoral to simply assume that there exists a strong negative feedback without any proof.
+++++
I asked for evidence and you gave me the apple and gravity question… and then were verbose but never gave an answer with evidence. Just hypothesis and ideology. But you used correlation as the obvious answer. I would say that if the apple sometimes fell up…. and sometimes fell down, gravity would only be a hypothesis.